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The Holy Orders Task Force Final Report Prepared for the College of of the Anglican in North America

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements … 5

Foreword … 6 Section I: The Task Force and its Process

1. Introduction - The Rt. Rev. David Hicks … 9 Section II: A Unified Approach to Scripture

2. General Hermeneutical Principles - Task Force … 13 3. Summary of Hermeneutical Principles: Drawn from the Foundational Documents of the ACNA - Task Force … 14 Section III: Principles of Anglican

4. Anglican Ecclesiology - Task Force … 18

5. Divergent Strands within the Anglican Tradition - Task Force … 27

6. The Ecclesiology of the Anglican Evangelical Tradition - The Rev. Dr. Leslie Fairfield … 32

Anglican Evangelical Ecclesiology: A Synopsis … 32 The Ecclesiology of the Evangelical Revival … 60 Anglican Evangelicals in the Modern World … 77 Endnotes … 102

7. The Ecclesiology of the Anglican Tradition - The Rev. Tobias Karlowicz … 111

The Ecclesiology of the Anglican High Church Tradition … 111 The Commission of : the Doctrine of … 123 The Ministry of Christ: the Authority, Grace, and Character of … 144 The Priesthood of Christ: the Eucharistic Sacrifice and ‘Sacerdotal’ Priesthood … 152

2 The Historical Argument for the Apostolic Succession … 170 The Diaconate in the High Church Tradition … 175 The Real Presence in the High Church Tradition … 177 Endnotes … 181

8. Anglican Charismatics in the Modern West - The Rev. Dr. Leslie Fairfield … 194

The in the Church … 194 The Wesleyan Revival … 201 The Anglican Charismatic Tradition since 1960 … 209 The Church in the Anglican Charismatic Tradition … 222 Endnotes … 224

9. Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology- A Timeline … 227 - Mrs. Katherine Atwood

10. A Case for Anglican Unity - Task Force … 245

Appendix I The Order of Deaconesses in the American Episcopal Church … 247 - Mrs. Katherine Atwood

Appendix II Chart on Women’s Ordination in the Anglican Provinces … 256

Section IV: The Arguments For and Against … 257

11. Perspectives on the Issue - Task Force … 258

12. Anglican Evangelicals and Women's Ordination … 260 - The Rev. Dr. Leslie Fairfield

The Matter of Names … 261 The Influence of Modern Western Society … 262 Presuppositions and Exegetical Practice … 264 The of Specific Texts … 269 Endnotes … 275

3 13. Anglo-Catholics and the … 277 - The Rev. Tobias Karlowicz

The Traditionalist Argument … 279 Critical Arguments … 283 Review of the Arguments … 285 Women’s Ordination and the Character of the Ministry … 294 Endnotes … 298

14. Bibliography for further Study - Task Force … 300

Sources from an Evangelical Perspective … 300 Sources from an Anglo- Perspective … 306

Section V: Analysis and Conclusions … 312

15. Final Summary - Task Force … 313

What We Were Asked to Do … 313 What We Have Learned … 314 What We Recommend … 316 Conclusion … 318

4 Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Suzanne Gill, Director of Communications for the Diocese of Fort Worth for the gift of her time and expertise.

5 Foreword

To: Members of The Anglican Church in North America From: Archbishop

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

In 2012 the College of Bishops appointed a Task Force on Holy Orders to provide the College with a scholarly and informed study on Holy Orders and, specifically, women in Holy Orders (the enabling resolution is reprinted in what follows). The Task Force, led by David Hicks, consisted of people representing differing perspectives and practices. They have met for the past 5 years and during that time have periodically released progress reports. This past January Bishop Hicks presented a report on the last phase of the process to the College, and we are now releasing the whole report to the Province.

Please note the following:

• The Task Force was not commissioned to resolve the issue, but was asked to develop resources to help the bishops in future conversation on this topic. • Therefore the report does not answer the questions of what the College is to do, but it is a study presented to the College to help the College in our discussions. • The report does not change our current practice regarding women’s orders as stated in our Constitution. Our current practice allows each diocese to determine whether it will ordain women as or . • The report will now be sent to the GAFCON Primates for their input and guidance for our discussions. • The College of Bishops will now be studying the whole report, and we will meet in special session later in the year to discuss how we move forward together.

As your Archbishop, I ask the following from you:

1) Don’t comment on the report until you have read it all. 2) Don’t comment on the report until you can fairly articulate the opposite point of view. 3) Remember that no decisions have been made at this time to pursue changing our Constitution. 4) Remember that we are all followers of Jesus Christ on mission together, holding those with the opposite point of view in Christian love and charity. 5) Lastly, sincerely pray for your bishops as we seek to serve Jesus Christ in this matter.

6 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:20-21

Thank you to The Rt. Rev. David Hicks, Chair The REC Diocese of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic The Rt. Rev. Kevin Allen, The Diocese of Cascadia Mrs. Katherine Atwood, The Diocese of Ft. Worth The Rev. Dr. Leslie Fairfield, The Diocese in New & School for Ministry (Ret.) The Rev. Mary Hays, The Diocese of Pittsburgh The Rev. Tobias Karlowicz, The Diocese of Quincy The Rt. Rev. Eric Menees, The Diocese of San Joaquin for your service to the Province by serving on the Task Force. Your hard work is much appreciated!

The Most Rev. Dr. Foley Beach Archbishop and Primate of the Anglican Church in North America

7

Section I: The Task Force and its Process

8 Introduction

This presentation of the work of the Theological Task Force on Holy Orders is a compendium of reports given to the College of Bishops and Provincial Councils of the Anglican Church in North America between January 2013 and January 2017. Each report was presented upon the completion of each of the five successive phases of a Method of Procedure, which was approved by the College of Bishops.

The Task Force was commissioned by Archbishop Robert Duncan, and renewed by Archbishop Foley Beach, to lead the College of Bishops in a discussion about the nature and purpose of holy orders, with a particular view toward the issue of the ordination of women. This was the fulfillment of a commitment made by the bishops at the time of the organization of the ACNA in 2009. It seemed wise to save the discussion about women’s ordination for a later point, after the province had been constituted and settled into a stable pattern and structure of life together.

While our province has a common understanding of the Christian faith, as expressed in the Anglican tradition, the Task Force recognizes that there are some significant differences in among us in the way that we read Scripture (hermeneutics) and our understanding of the nature of the church and ordained ministry (ecclesiology). The reports from phases two and three address these topics respectively. Any discussion about the interpretation of the relevant biblical texts must take into consideration the underlying theological commitments related to hermeneutics and ecclesiology. The Task Force is hopeful that this part of its work will be especially helpful to the bishops, leading toward fruitful discussion beyond the usual impasse that comes from debates about the ordination of women.

The method of procedure also takes into account the bond of fellowship that our province enjoys with other provinces in the . We have been in communication with leaders in the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) partnership of Anglican churches, and we anticipate more formal discussion of this report in the months ahead.

Finally, I wish to express my sincere thanks to the membership of the Task Force. Each person made important contributions to the production of our reports, and I am indebted to them for their patience, theological acumen, and deepened friendship through these years of working together.

The Rt. Rev. David L. Hicks, PhD Chairman

9 Task Force Members

The Rt. Rev. David Hicks, Chair The REC Diocese of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic

The Rt. Rev. Dr. David L. Hicks is Bishop Ordinary of the Diocese of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic and President of Reformed Episcopal Seminary, Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. He received a Master of Sacred from the Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, and MAR and PhD degrees from Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. He and his wife, Lisa, reside in Oreland, Pennsylvania.

The Rt. Rev. Kevin Allen, The Diocese of Cascadia

The Rt. Rev. Kevin Bond Allen was unanimously elected the first bishop of the ACNA Diocese of Cascadia and was consecrated September 30th 2011. Bishop Kevin studied at Pacific Lutheran University and the University of (BA), Seattle University (graduate studies), Ridley Hall UK and General Theological Seminary NY (MDiv). He began his ministry with youth in the 70’s; continued as a lay missioner overseas in and Bangladesh. He continued that ministry as the first vicar of Cambodian Episcopal Church with refugees in Tacoma WA, and eventually assisted in founding the Diocese of Cascadia. He currently serves on the national board of SOMA USA and is chair of the Orthodox-Anglican Dialogue provincial task force. He is married to Stefanie and lives in Silverdale, Washington.

Mrs. Katherine Atwood, The Diocese of Ft. Worth

Katherine Buckler Atwood received her undergraduate degree in Biology from Villanova University in 1980. She went on to study at Westminster Theological Seminary, and Trinity School for Ministry (M.Div. ’84). She is active in missions, and trained with the ECMC in Pasadena. She also worked with theological students, encouraging them to bring missions to their future parishes. She has been actively involved in the theological debate on the issue of ordination since the 70’s and has attended four general Conventions to be an official part of the debate both in formal settings and informally, working with ECM, Forward in Faith, and the Diocese of Fort Worth. She is an examining chaplain for the Diocese in Church History and assists in the diaconal training program. She and her husband Jay have been married for 32 years and currently serve in the parish of St. Francis of Assisi, in Willow Park.

10 The Rev. Dr. Leslie Fairfield, The Diocese in New England & Trinity School for Ministry (Ret.)

The Rev. Dr. Leslie Fairfield was educated at Princeton (A.B. 1962) and Harvard (Ph.D. 1969). He is Professor Emeritus of Church History at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA where he taught from 1976 to 2006. He was ordained as a in the Diocese of Pittsburgh by Bishop Appleyard in June of 1982 and was ordained as in December of the same year. He married his wife Lynn in 1966 and they presently live in Amherst, Massachussetts.

The Rev. Canon Mary Hays, The Diocese of Pittsburgh

Mary Hays has been working with Christian leaders of all ages, lay and ordained, for more than 40 years. Mary graduated from Smith College (A.B. in religion), Berkeley Divinity School at Yale (M. Div.), and Fuller Theological Seminary (D. Min.), and was ordained in the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut. (Deacon, 1983; Priest, 1984). She served as a Canon to Archbishop Duncan in the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh for 17 years. Prior to that she taught in the areas of leadership and spirituality at Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry for nine years and served parishes in Connecticut and Virginia. She has been married to the Rev. Whis Hays for 42 years

The Rev. Tobias Karlowicz, The Diocese of Quincy

Tobias A. Karlowicz studied music and philosophy at Oberlin College prior to attending seminary at . In 2013, he received his PhD from the University of St Andrews for a thesis on the theology of E.B. Pusey. After seminary, he ministered in two congregations in rural Illinois; he now assists at St. Michael and All Angels Church in Peoria, Illinois. He is Canon Theologian of the Diocese of Quincy, adjunct professor of Church History at Nashotah House, and a member of the Society of the Holy Cross (SSC).

The Rt. Rev. Eric Menees, The Diocese of San Joaquin

Bishop Menees is the fifth bishop of the Diocese of San Joaquin having been consecrated Bishop Ordinary on October 22, 2011. Bishop Menees took his D.Min at Seabury Western and his M.Div at General Seminary. Prior to coming to San Joaquin Bishop Menees served as founding at the Church of the Resurrection, San Marcos, CA., and Rector at Grace Church. In addition, Bishop Menees ministered in several Spanish Language parishes founding the Spanish Language congregations at St. Paul’s, San Diego and , Santa Ana. Bishop Menees is married to with two children, Milagro and Sebastian.

11

Section II: A Unified Approach to Scripture

12 General Hermeneutical Principles

One of the greatest barriers to the successful discussion of any issue is the failure to establish common understandings for terms and concepts that are key the discussion. The College of Bishops voted to accept these principles as their official guidelines for how Scripture can be understood and used appropriately in these discussions. Both this list and the summary that follows were approved by the College of Bishops on June 20th, 2013.

• Scripture is the inspired Word of God. • Scripture has authority over the Church. • The Church is the servant of Scripture as its witness and keeper. • in Christ is the central theme in Scripture. • Scripture is coherent; one part can interpret another without doing violence to its overall integrity. • Scripture is to be read with reference to the Church and as received by the Church. • The books of Scripture display various genres and have their own cultural and linguistic contexts. • Scripture has an original as well as a present audience.

13 A Summary of Hermeneutical Principles Drawn from the Foundational Documents of the ACNA

Abbreviations: ACNA The Constitution of the Anglican Church in North America JD The Declaration Articles The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (1571) BCP The (1662)

1. “We confess the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired Word of God, containing all things necessary for salvation, and to be the final authority and unchangeable standard for Christian faith and life.”(ACNA 1, cf. JD 2, Articles 6, 20, 21)

Scripture is our starting point. It is not just another ancient text; it is the word of God, and holds authority over the Church and its members. It not only teaches and reveals the way to salvation, it also provides guidance for daily life.

2. “The is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in the plain and canonical sense, respectful of the Church's historic and consensual reading” (JD 2)

The Word of God is able to address us plainly; we should not approach the text with a hermeneutic of suspicion. Individual passages of Scripture, including the more obscure or challenging, are rightly understood in the context of the books in which they are found and in light of the Bible as a whole.

The Church’s historical and consensual understanding of the Bible must be taken seriously when interpreting and explaining Scripture. New understandings of the Bible’s meaning (for example, as a result of new understanding of the original language or new insights into its cultural context) should be weighed in light of the Church’s historic wisdom.

3. “The is not contrary to the New for both in the Old and everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only mediator between God and man.” (Article 7)

Both the Old and New Testaments are authoritative in matters pertaining to salvation; the central theme of both Testaments is salvation, redemption in Jesus Christ. The Old Testament is key to a full understanding of God’s redemptive activity, which centers on Jesus; it is not merely historical background.

4. “Although the Law given from God by Moses, as touching ceremonies and rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth, yet notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral" (Article 7)

14 Although the Bible is a coherent whole, certain practices described in the Old Testament are no longer binding on Christians. Such for example were the ceremonial laws governing the sacrifices in the Temple, which have been fulfilled by Our Lord's death on Calvary. Such likewise were the civil laws governing the people of Israel, like the provision of "cities of refuge." However, the moral commandments, principles and teachings of the Old Testament were affirmed and clarified by the New, and continue in force as the standard for our daily life.

5. “Although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ...so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of salvation” (Article 20, cf. Article 21 regarding General Councils... “things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of holy Scripture” and Article 6, “…whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be received by any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.”).

Scripture stands in authority above the Church; therefore, the Church must not enforce or assert anything that is not in Scripture as being necessary for Salvation. At the same time, the Church is the witness to and keeper of the Bible and is “the pillar and ground of truth” (1 Tim 3:15). As such, it provides the context in which the Scriptures are rightly read and interpreted.

6. “The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith; and yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation (Article 20).

The Church has authority to alter rites and ceremonies and to rule in theological and moral areas not strictly necessary to Salvation, where the faithful have disagreed. The Church may not use its authority in a way which could require its people to believe or to act in a manner contrary to Scripture.

7. “… it is but reasonable, that upon weighty and important considerations, according to the various exigency of times and occasions, such changes and alterations should be made [in rites and ceremonies], as to those that are in place of Authority should from time to time seem either necessary or expedient” (BCP, )

The Church may and sometimes must initiate change pertaining to certain aspects of our and polity which do not deal specifically with Salvation or morality. No alterations should be made lightly or without considering the needs and concerns of the Church in the current situation and culture. While such changes do not have to find reference in the specific teaching of Scripture, they may never contradict it.

8. “We confess as proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture the historic faith” (or JD, ‘the rule of faith’) “of the undivided church as declared by the three Catholic : the Apostles’, the Nicene and the Athanasian” (ACNA 4, cf. JD 3, Article 8.)

15 Any interpretation of Biblical passages should align with the affirmations of the three Catholic Creeds in matters of theology and morality, because in them the Church teaches the historic faith found in Scripture. In other words, the Creeds summarize the rule of Faith found in Holy Scripture; therefore, they are a sure guide for our interpretation of what Scripture teaches.

9. “We uphold the Thirty-Nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God's word and as authoritative for Anglicans today.” (JD 4) cf. “We receive the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, taken in their literal and grammatical sense, as expressing the Anglican response to certain doctrinal issues controverted at that time, and as expressing fundamental principles of authentic Anglican belief.” (ACNA 7)

The Articles remain an authoritative document for Anglicans, agreeing with God’s Word and setting the boundaries for its interpretation and use. They are to be understood and interpreted in light of the doctrinal issues and controversies that were prevalent at the time they were formulated.

10. “We celebrate the God-given diversity among us which enriches our global fellowship, and we acknowledge freedom in secondary matters. We pledge to work together to seek the mind of Christ on issues that divide us” (JD 12) cf: “so that all things be done to edifying” (Article 34).

Our interpretation of Scripture should be done in a spirit of love and humility, with prayer and diligence, in recognition of and delight in the diversity of our global fellowship. While allowing freedom in secondary issues, we are called together to seek the mind of Christ in divisive issues.

16

Section III: Principles of Anglican Ecclesiology

17 Principles of Anglican Ecclesiology Concerning Holy Orders Drawn from the Foundational Documents of the Anglican Church in North America

Abbreviations: ACNA The Constitution of the Anglican Church in North America JD The Jerusalem Declaration BCP The Book of Common Prayer (1662), including the Ordinal ACNA Canons The Canons of the Anglican Church in North America ACNA Ordinal The Ordinal of the Anglican Church in North America

Other Forms of Citation The Articles of Religion (cited by article number) Certain Sermons, or Homilies, Appointed to be Read in Churches (cited by the abbreviated title of the homily)

The Nature and Mission of the Church

1. The Church is a gathering of God’s people, instituted by Jesus Christ, for the propagation of sound doctrine, the administration of the , and the exercise of godly discipline.

a. And I believe one [Holy] Catholick and Apostolick Church (BCP, Nicene ).1

b. The visible Church of Christ is a Congregation of faithful men, in which the pure word of God is preached and the sacraments be duly Ministered according to Christ’s ordinance (Article 19).

c. The true church is an universal congregation or fellowship of God’s faithful and elect people, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the head corner-stone (Eph. 2:20). And it hath always three notes or marks whereby it is known: pure and sound doctrine, the sacraments ministered according to Christ’s holy institution, and the right use of ecclesiastical discipline. This description of the Church is agreeable both to the Scriptures of God, and also to the doctrine of the ancient fathers, so that none may justly find fault therewith (Homily for Whitsunday). 1 Evidently the word "holy" was omitted from the 1662 BCP through a printer's error, and should be construed as present. See W.H. Griffith Thomas, The Principles of Theology (London: Vine Books, (1978), 149.

18 d. Have always therefore printed in your remembrance, how great a treasure is committed to your charge. For they are the sheep of Christ, which he bought with his death, and for whom he shed his bloud. The Church and Congregation whom you must serve, is his spouse, and his body (BCP, The Ordering of Priests).

2. The purpose of the Church is to extend the Kingdom of God by making disciples of all nations, in obedience to Christ’s command.

a. The mission of the Province is to extend the Kingdom of God by so presenting Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit that people everywhere will come to put their trust in God through Him, know Him as Savior and serve Him as Lord in the fellowship of the Church. The chief agents of this mission to extend the Kingdom of God are the (ACNA III.1).

b. The work of the Province is to equip each member of the Province so that they may reconcile the world to Christ, plant new congregations, and make disciples of all nations; baptizing them in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything commanded by Jesus Christ (ACNA III.2).

3. The monarch is considered to have responsibility for the spiritual welfare of his subjects as well as their temporal well-being. Regardless of any official connections which may occur between Church and State, the ministry of Word and is the sole province of the Church.

a. The King’s Majesty hath the chief power in this realm of England, and other his Dominions, unto whom the chief Government of all Estates of this Realm, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign Jurisdiction. Where we attribute to the King’s Majesty the chief government, by which Titles we understand the minds of some slanderous folks to be offended; we give not to our Princes the ministering either of God’s Word, or of the Sacraments, the which thing the Injunctions also lately set forth by Elizabeth our Queen do most plainly testify; but that only prerogative, which we see to have been given always to all godly Princes in holy Scriptures by God himself; that is, that they should rule all estates and degrees committed to their charge by God, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Temporal, and restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and evil-doers. The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England. The laws of the Realm may punish Christian men with death, for heinous and grievous offences. It is lawful for Christian men,

19 at the command of the Magistrate, to wear weapons and serve in the wars (Article 37).

The Authority of the Church

4. The Church has the authority to distinguish between biblical teaching and false doctrine. The Church also has further authority to determine what rites or ceremonies may be used, and the responsibility to adapt them for different times and cultures.

a. The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies and Authority in Controversies of Faith (Article 20).

b. It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men’s manners, so that nothing be ordained against God’s word…Every Particular or National Church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish Ceremonies or Rites of the Church ordained only by man’s authority, so that all things be done to edifying (Article 34).

5. In no case may the teaching or rites of the Church oppose Holy Scripture; inasmuch as Church councils are composed of human beings, they are subject to error and in need of correction by Scripture. In anything not contrary to Scripture, however, Church Authority supersedes private judgment.

a. [I]t is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing contrary to God’s word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet it ought not to Decree any thing against the same; so besides the same ought it not to enforce anything to be believed for necessity of salvation (Article 20).

b. General Councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of Princes. And when they be gathered together (forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and the Word of God) they may err, and sometime have erred, even in things pertaining unto God. Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation, have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of Holy Scripture (Article 21).

20 c. Whosoever through his private judgement, willingly and purposely, doth openly break the traditions and ceremonies of the Church, which be not repugnant to the Word of God, and be ordained and approved by common authority, ought to be rebuked openly, (that others may fear to do the like,) as he that offendeth against the common order of the Church, and hurteth the authority of the Magistrate, and woundeth the consciences of the weak brethren (Article 34).

The Ordained Ministers of the Church

6. Three orders of ministry are set apart to lead the Church in preaching sound doctrine, administering the Holy Sacraments and exercising godly discipline: bishops, priests and deacons. The particular duties of these offices may not be exercised without ordination.

a. It is evident unto all men diligently reading holy Scripture and ancient Authors, that from the Apostles time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church: Bishops, Priests and Deacons (BCP, Preface to the Ordinal).

b. We recognize that God has called and gifted bishops, priests and deacons in historic succession to equip all the people of God for their ministry in the world. We uphold the classic Anglican Ordinal as an authoritative standard of clerical orders (JD, 7).

c. It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of publick preaching, or ministering the Sacraments in the Congregation, before he be lawfully called, and sent to execute the same (Article 23).

d. Which offices were evermore had in such reverend estimation, that no man might presume to execute any of them, except he … by publick Prayer, with Imposition of Hands, were approved and admitted thereunto by lawful authority (BCP, Preface to the Ordinal).

7. All ordained persons are meant to demonstrate godly character and behavior. However, the unworthiness of any ordained person does not hinder the efficacy of the sacraments.

21 a. Which offices were evermore had in such reverend estimation, that no man might presume to execute any of them, except he were first called, tried, examined and known to have such qualities as are requisite for the same (BCP, Preface to the Ordinal).

b. Although in the visible Church the evil be ever mingled with the good, and sometimes the evil have chief authority in the Ministration of the Word and Sacraments, yet forasmuch as they do not the same in their own name, but in the Christ’s, and do minister by his commission and authority, we may use their Ministry, both in hearing the Word of God, and in receiving of the Sacraments. Neither is the effect of Christ’s ordinance taken away by their wickedness, nor the grace of God’s gifts diminished from such as by faith and rightly do receive the Sacraments ministered unto them; which be effectual because of Christ’s institution and promise, although they be ministered by evil men. Nevertheless, it appertaineth to the discipline of the Church, that inquiry be made of evil Ministers, and that they be accused by those that have knowledge of their offences; and finally being found guilty, by just judgement be deposed (Article 26).

The Office of Bishop

8. The Scripture passages pertaining to the consecration of a bishop indicate that he ought to be focused on caring for his people, loving and protecting them, even when doing so is costly; and should demonstrate Christian virtues such as holiness, humility, hospitality, sobriety, and self-discipline.

a. I Peter 5:2-3; I Tim 3:8-13; I Tim 3: 1-7, 5:17; Titus 1:6-9 (ACNA Canons III.8.1)

b. I Tim 3: 1ff; Acts 20:17ff.; St. John 21:15ff.; St. John 20:19ff.; St. Matthew 28:18ff (BCP, The Consecration of Bishops)

c. Isaiah 61:1-11, Psalm 100, 1 Timothy 3:1-7, Acts 20:17-35, John 21:15-19, John 20:19-23, Matthew 28:18-20 (ACNA Ordinal)

9. Bishops are the chief missionaries, and administrators of the Church within their jurisdictions. As such, they perform and .

a. Except as hereinafter provided, the norms for ordination shall be determined by the Bishop having jurisdiction (ACNA Canons III.1.4)

22

b. Will you be faithful in Ordaining, sending, or laying hands upon others? (BCP, The Consecration of Bishops).

c. By the tradition of Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, Bishops are consecrated for the whole Church and are successors of the Apostles through the grace of the Holy Spirit given to them. They are chief missionaries and chief pastors, guardians and teachers of doctrine, and administrators of godly discipline and governance (ACNA Canons III.8.2)

10. Bishops are called to guard the faith and administer discipline in order to preserve and sustain the holiness of the Church. In so doing, they represent and guard the unity of the Church.

a. We confess the godly historic Episcopate as an inherent part of the apostolic faith and practice and therefore as integral to the fullness and unity of the (ACNA I.3)

b. The chief work of the College of Bishops shall be the propagation and defense of the Faith and Order of the church, and in service as the visible sign and expression of the Unity of the Church (ACNA X.1)

c. Are you ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God’s Word; and both privately and openly to call upon and encourage others to the same? (BCP, The Consecration of Bishops)

d. A Bishop is called by God and the Church to be a shepherd who feeds the flock entrusted to his care. A Bishop is an overseer of the flock and as such is called to propagate, to teach, and to uphold and defend the faith and order of the Church willingly and as God wants him to – not greedy for money, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to his care, but being a wholesome example to the entire flock of Christ (1 Peter 5:2-3). These requirements are in addition to the requirements set forth in Canon 2 for Deacon (1 Timothy 3:8-13) and for Presbyter (1 Timothy 3:1-7; 5:17; Titus 1:6- 9) (ACNA Canons III.8.1).

23 The Office of Presbyter (Priest)

11. The Scriptures passages pertaining to the ordination of presbyters (priests) indicate that they should be called and equipped by God; should equip God’s people for ministry, protecting them from harm; and should demonstrate a godly character.

a. 1Tim 3:1-7, 5-17; Titus 1:6-9 (ACNA Canon III.2.3)

b. Ephesians 4:7 ff., Matthew 9:36 ff., John 10:1 ff. (BCP, The Ordering of Priests).

c. Isaiah 6:1-8, Psalm 119:33-40, Ephesians 4:7-13, Philippians 4:4-9, Matthew 9:35-10:1, John 10:1-16 (ACNA Ordinal)

12. Presbyters (priests) are called to nourish God’s people (individually and corporately) through the word of God and administration of the sacraments. Likewise it is their ministry to ensure that God’s people become mature disciples, protected from erroneous doctrine.

a. And now again we exhort you, in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you have in remembrance into how high a dignity, and to how weighty an office and charge ye are called: That is to say, to be messengers, watchmen, and stewards of ; to teach and to premonish, to feed and provide for the Lords family; to seek for Christ’s sheep that are dispersed abroad, and for his children who are in the midst of this naughty world, that they may be saved through Christ for ever.…Wherefore consider with your selves the end of your ministry towards the children of God, towards the spouse and body of Christ, and see that you never cease your labour, your care and diligence, until you have done all that lieth in you, according to your bounden duty, to bring all such as are or shall be committed to your charge, unto that agreement in the faith and knowledge of God, and to that ripeness and perfectness of age in Christ, that there be no place left among you, either for errour in Religion, or for viciousness of life (BCP, The Ordering of Priests).

b. Will you then give your faithful diligence always so to minister the Doctrine and Sacraments, and the Discipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded, and as this Church and Realm hath received the same, according to the Commandments of God; so that you may teach the people committed to your Cure and Charge, with all diligence to keep and observe the same? (BCP, The Ordering of Priests).

24 c. Will you be ready with all faithful diligence to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines, contrary to God’s word? (BCP, The Ordering of Priests).

d. Receive the holy Ghost for the Office and work of a Priest in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the Imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained. And be thou a faithful Dispenser of the Word of God, and of his holy Sacraments (BCP, The Ordering of Priests).

e. Take thou Authority to preach the Word of God, and to minister the holy Sacraments in the Congregation, where thou shalt be lawfully appointed thereunto (BCP, the Ordering of Priests)

The Office of Deacon

13. The Scripture passages pertaining to the ordination of deacons indicate that they are called to minister to human need and to demonstrate the same godly character expected of all ordained persons.

a. 1 Tim 3:8; Acts 6:2; Luke 12:35-40 (BCP, The Ordering of Deacons)

b. Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 119:1-8; 1Timothy 3:8-13; Luke 12:35-40 (ACNA Ordinal)

14. Deacons are called to servant ministry under the with a particular concern and advocacy for the needy. They catechize young and old; proclaim the ; and assist the priest in public worship.

a. It appertaineth to the office of a Deacon, in the Church where he shall be appointed to serve, to assist the Priest in Divine Service, and specially when he ministereth the holy Communion, and to help him in the distribution thereof, and to read holy Scriptures and Homilies in the Church; and to instruct the youth in the Catechism; in the absence of the Priest to baptize infants; and to preach, if he be admitted thereto by the Bishop. And furthermore, it is his office, where provision is so made, to search for the sick, poor, and impotent people of the Parish, to intimate their estates, names, and places where they dwell, unto the , that by his exhortation they may be relieved with the alms of the Parishioners, or others (BCP, The Ordering of Deacons).

25

b. It belongs to the Office of a Deacon, to assist the Priest in public worship, especially in the administration of Holy Communion; to lead in public prayer; to read , and to instruct both young and old in the Catechism; and at the direction of the Priest, to baptize and to preach. Furthermore, it is the Deacon’s Office to work with the laity in searching for the sick, the poor, and the helpless, that they may be relieved (ACNA Ordinal).

26 Divergent Strands within the Anglican Tradition

Anglican tradition has been strengthened by the existence of “three strands” of theological perspective over time – Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical/Reformed, and

Charismatic.

The existence of these three strands has provided a level of flexibility and breadth in , which has been the hallmark of our tradition. Although strength is derived from the combination of the three strands, we recognize that often there is tension between them, and at certain points in history there has been a high level of tension between them.

The current issue of men and women in holy orders presents a point of high tension between the strands. While we anticipate that our study will provide resources for the church to arrive at further definition and clarification of our understanding of holy orders, we urge the Church not to marginalize one of the strands in an attempt to resolve one point of tension.

The Task Force has identified and examined those areas of “common ground” shared by the three strands.

• From the foundational documents we understand that holy orders in the Anglican Church are based on the historic pattern of the three-fold order of bishops, priests and deacons. • Each ordained office has duties peculiar to it, and there is a hierarchical relationship between the three. The details of the qualifications for each ordained office are outlined in Holy Scripture, the Ordinal, and the Constitution and Canons. • The act of ordination requires conformity to these requirements and the laying on of hands by a bishop with authority in that jurisdiction. • Those called to holy orders traditionally have two key functions. The first is the transmission of the Gospel and right doctrine. The second is the administration of the Sacraments. Bishops, priests and deacons are set apart and given the responsibility to transmit, administer and defend the doctrine and liturgy of the Church and care for the spiritual health of the laity.

We also noted that there are matters in the life of the Church, in which the Church is free to make changes or eliminate; however, there are other matters which the Church is not free to modify or abolish (Article XX). The Church has the authority to provide form

27 and order for the corporate religious worship of the church, which is the liturgy, but the Church may only change or eliminate those traditions and ceremonies which are not based on the instructions of Scripture. The Church may do nothing that circumvents or supersedes the Word of God.

When changes are made, they are done in a conciliar manner. In the Anglican Church, there are two traditions and ceremonies that are accepted as clearly and directly being ordained by Christ and therefore are not able to be changed substantially or abolished: these are and Holy Communion.

The Church may not change or replace the elements chosen by Christ, or the words and actions that accompany them, as witnessed to by Scripture. The ultimate question before the Task Force, the Bishops and the Church is the extent to which the Church is free to alter matters pertaining to ordination rites, regulations and qualifications.

We outlined the description of the three-fold office, in terms of what our church, as a whole, understands each office and how they are to function in our church.

Deacons: • The office of deacon is concerned with actively ministering to the physical and spiritual needs of the community and assisting the priest in the liturgy. • Deacons are the liaison between the needs of the people and the parish leadership. • Deacons owe obedience to the bishop and represent him to the community at large. • Deacons must be publically recognized for their virtue, dependability, honesty and dedication. They must prove themselves able to be leaders within their own households and willing to minister among the people to meet their daily needs, freeing other ministers to concentrate on the spiritual business of the church. • They baptize only if it is not possible for the priest to be present. • They preach only with authorization by the bishop. • They do not pronounce blessings or , nor do they consecrate at the

28 Priests: • A candidate for ordination to the priesthood is a deacon, who has sufficient experience and understanding of the faith and lives a morally upright life. The priesthood is not a position of privilege, but a post of serious responsibility. • Priests receive authority from the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands at ordination to pronounce blessing, or the need for further repentance, and to consecrate and administer the holy sacraments. Priests also receive full authority to preach and teach the Word of God to the congregation. They speak to God on behalf of the congregation and speak to the congregation on behalf of God. • A priest’s duty is to study the Scriptures continually, to equip the for the work of ministry and to act as a leader and defender of the flock, bringing them safely through the door of Christ. Following the pattern of the Apostles, priests are sent out into the world to represent the gospel message and to grow the flocks committed to their charge. • Priests owe obedience to their bishop and may be given full ecclesiastical authority in a parish. Priests exercise the ministry of their order within a diocese and only with the written permission of their bishop. They represent the bishop and the authority of the Apostles in the congregation where they exercise their ministry.

Bishops: • By the tradition of Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, bishops are consecrated by at least three other bishops in apostolic succession, signifying that their duty is not only to their own dioceses but also to the Church as a whole. Bishops attend to the whole Church by participating in the Church’s councils and defending the faith in the public arena. They are successors of the Apostles in their oversight of the Church, through the grace of the Holy Spirit given to them. They are chief missionaries and chief pastors, guardians and teachers of right doctrine and administrators of godly discipline and governance. They maintain sound teaching and right worship in the Church. • Bishops are called to exercise their ministry as priests, to be pastors to the priests in their dioceses, to supervise and to direct the deacons, and to work publicly and privately for the preservation of the faith and teaching of right doctrine for the people. Like a shepherd, bishops provide direction and discipline for the flock and are responsible for the growth of the Church, by providing for the establishment of new congregations and ordaining to serve them. • Although there may be titled offices higher than bishop, such as Archbishop, these do not have the Church’s authority to declare doctrine unilaterally or to challenge the authority of a bishop in his own diocese, except if that bishop is in violation of the Constitution and Canons of the Province of the Church.

29

• Bishops attend to the whole Church by participating in the Church’s councils and defending the faith in the public arena. • They are successors of the Apostles in their oversight of the Church, through the grace of the Holy Spirit given to them. • They are chief missionaries and chief pastors, guardians and teachers of right doctrine and administrators of godly discipline and governance. • They maintain sound teaching and right worship in the Church.

We also note that there are divergent views among the three strands. The Task Force has been working to identify those perspectives on ordination which lead to divergent understandings of the nature of ordination and holy orders. In some instances, the divergence stems from a difference of emphasis, rather than contradictory perspectives. Other points of divergence occur with certain perspectives that are not accepted by the whole church, but nevertheless, they remain acceptable positions within the history of the Anglican tradition.

Bishops: • Teacher/scholar • Pastors’ Pastor • Prophet (to the world) • Social activist (Liberation theology) • Lead in speaking the accountable word to the world (eg. Manhattan Declaration) • Esse of Christ’s Church (No bishop, no legitimate Church) • Bene Esse (A good form of polity that contributes to the well-being of the Church) • Successor to the Apostles • Channel of Apostolic authority (Anglo-catholic) • Passing teacher’s mantle (Evangelical/Reformed) • Spiritual gifting (Evangelical/Charismatic) • Father of the family • First among Presbyters (essentially a priest, who has been set apart for a separate function) • Chief Mission Mobilizer • Symbol of Unity in Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church • High Priest

30 Priests: • Minister of Word & Sacrament • Channel of sacramental grace • Eucharistic role – in persona Christi • Pastor/Teacher • Coach/Comforter • Local mission mobilizer/encourager of gifts • Ruling Father • Extension of the bishop’s own ministry • Scholar in residence/expert on religion • Social worker • Sacrificing Priest

Deacons: • Priest-in-waiting • Junior Priest • Assistant at the • Extension of the bishop’s ministry • Aide to the bishop • Intermediary between the Church & the needs of the world • Catechists • Organizer of new ministries • Analogous to the OT Levite • There is an essential difference between the transitional and vocational diaconate

The Task Force carefully notes that the Anglican way has been concerned to grant as much liberty of conscience as possible, so that beyond the definitions found in the Ordinal various interpretations of what it means to be a bishop, priest or deacon (even contradictory ones) have been tolerated in the interest of that liberty. It remains to be seen whether or not the issue of women’s ordination can be resolved in any direction beyond the status quo, apart from making judgments about these divergent views, thereby further defining holy orders for the whole church. The bishops and Church will need to consider the tension between the values of liberty and unity in this regard.

31 The Ecclesiology of the Anglican Evangelical Tradition

Anglican Evangelical Ecclesiology: A Synopsis

From the mid-16th century down to the present, Anglican Evangelical ideas about the Church have been grounded in the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer (1552 and its subsequent revisions in 1559 and 1662). Based on these twin authorities, Anglican Evangelical ecclesiology has historically emphasized three themes, namely:

(1) The People of God: Article 19 describes the Church first as "a congregation of faithful men" (i.e. people). The fundamental quality of the Church is its people-hood. Therein lies its essential nature, not in its institutions, still less in any clerical caste. Furthermore, the Church is a people called out of the world by God's word of promise. It is formed and shaped by the Covenant promises of God, obeyed in faith by the power of the Holy Spirit.

(2) The Word of God: Article 19 describes the marks of a true Church, namely one "in the which the pure word of God is preached and the sacraments be duly ministered, according to Christ's ordinance..." Constant preaching and teaching of God's word sustain the integrity of God's People. Nothing is more important for the health of the "congregation" than the constant proclamation of God's truth, over against the lies and distortions uttered by the fallen world. Faithful proclamation of God's word (both affirmative and prohibitive) has constituted the true apostolic succession, in the view of Anglican Evangelicals since the .

The word of God operates in two ways, in constituting the Church. First, the Bible specifies those truths that are necessary to salvation. As Article 6 puts it, "Holy Scriptures (sic) containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite and necessary to salvation..."Secondly, in matters not strictly necessary for salvation, the Bible prescribes the boundaries beyond which it is not lawful for the Church to stray. According to Article 20, "The Church hath power to decree rites or ceremonies and authority in controversies of faith: and yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing contrary to God's word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another."

32 The Sacraments are "visible words" and according to Article 25 "they be certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace...by the which He doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our faith in Him."

(3) The Ordained Ministry as Proclamatory and Didactic: In the Ordinal, the bishop hands the newly ordained presbyter a Bible and says, "Take thou authority to preach the Word of God, and to minister the holy sacraments in the congregation..." The verbal ministries of bishop and presbyter are crucial to the health of the Church, building up God's people in the word of God. However, the Church is not constituted nor defined by its ministerial structures. Specifically, the three-fold order conduces to the bene esse of the Church, but it could be otherwise, if duly constituted authority deemed another structure useful to the mission of God's people. Whatever the specific details, the ministry of bishops and presbyters is fundamentally proclamatory and didactic, supporting the prophetic (not primarily the priestly) calling of God's people.

The Ecclesiology of the

The English Reformers of the 16th century intended to restore the purity of New Testament . They may indeed have succeeded in certain respects. But they also intended to correct various arguable abuses in the late medieval Roman Church. So although the New Testament was the Reformers' criterion and standard in matters of doctrine, the Church that they inherited also elicited from them certain reactive responses. We cannot understand the ecclesiology of the English Reformation unless we first consider the ecclesiology that the Reformers rejected.

The Late Medieval Church in England

Three major features of the late medieval Roman Church were objectionable to the English Reformers. The Church as it existed in the early 16th century was (1) Imperial (2) Papal and (3) not surprisingly, Late Medieval Western Catholic.

Imperial

How to describe the vast geographical scope of the Roman Church in, say, 1500, and the claims to dominate it both spiritually and politically that the Church had been advancing for over a thousand years? The term "international" is anachronistic inasmuch as "nations" were only beginning to coalesce and to evince a political solidarity and a sense of national identity in the early 16th century. The term "European" is also anachronistic as the notion of "Europe" took shape in the 18th century.1 But the term "imperial" reflects both the

33 fact that the Roman Church inherited the Western Roman Empire (minus North Africa) geographically, and also developed claims to inherit imperial sovereignty over that area both in the temporal and the spiritual spheres. As we shall see, the English Reformers rejected those territorial claims of the Roman Church, and ascribed both that temporal and that spiritual "headship" to the newly emerging Tudor national monarchy in England.

Briefly, the imperial claims of the Roman Church (with memories of Ambrose and Gregory the Great) first emerged in the 750s in a document evidently forged in the papal curia, the so-called "Donation of Constantine." A brief moment in which the Frankish monarchy seemed subservient to the Bishop of Rome offered the opportunity to claim that Constantine (312-337) had bequeathed the entire Western Roman Empire to Pope Sylvester I, in gratitude for having miraculously healed the Emperor of leprosy. However as the 8th century wore on, the Frankish monarchy under Charlemagne (778-814) far eclipsed the power of the popes, and Charlemagne developed a rival ideology of sacral kingship (looking back to Constantine and ultimately to King David). Charlemagne asserted the right to rule both civil society and the institutional Church in his vast empire. This latter power included the right to summon councils that defined doctrine and passed legislation for the Church, as well as to appoint to clerical offices and to manage the vast lands and the finances of the Church. "You say and pray while I rule" would not caricature Charlemagne's attitude extravagantly.2

Three centuries later the Bishops of Rome recovered (with assistance from the German Emperors) from a moral and political slough of despond, and began to revive the erstwhile imperial dreams of the mid-8th century popes. Gregory VII (1073-1085) in particular began to make far-reaching claims for the authority of the Bishops of Rome over the kings and princes in the West. Gregory forbad in particular the long-standing practice by which rulers appointed their candidates to bishoprics and abbacies (the so-called practice of "lay investiture) thus ensuring that the armed forces of the latter would join the ruler's army for the summer fighting season each year. Naturally the German Emperors opposed the 3 upstart pretensions of their former Roman proteges and fought back.

A long struggle ensued between rulers and popes, which brought England into the fray when William I won the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The set-to between Henry II and arose over the monarch's determination to rule the Church in England, on the model of Charlemagne and the later German emperors. Likewise the kerfuffle between King John and Pope Innocent III in the early 1200s arose over the pope's determination to install his candidate (and not John's) as . After both John and Innocent died in 1216 the battle between kings and popes died down in England for three centuries, as the two opponents agreed to take turns milking the Church of its revenues. The pope retained the right to appoint members of his curia (in absentia) to two English bishoprics, and other (absent) papal servants to a long list of lucrative deaneries and canonries. The king appointed his crown servants to many of the rest. With the exception of a few spats during the upheaval

34 of the Black Death, this compromise held fast until Henry VIII conceived the notion that he might milk the whole cow by himself. As we shall see.4

Meanwhile however Pope Boniface VIII uttered the most extensive claims for papal sovereignty in the West, in his famous bull Unam Sanctam (1302). "It is altogether necessary to salvation," Boniface asserted, "for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff."5 Unfortunately for Rome, Boniface had uttered his global assertion precisely at the moment when the real power of the papacy was about to crumble before the onslaught of the ruthless King Philip IV of . After Boniface's death (at the hands of a French SWAT team) the popes took up residence at Avignon for nearly seventy years (1309-1377) and the papal claims to temporal sovereignty took a nosedive. The disastrous papal schism (1378- 1415) shredded those pretensions even further. By the early 16th century the bishops of Rome had dwindled to the level of a regional Italian power. But the long memory of papal territorial claims sealed the identification of the Roman Church with the geographical area of old Western Roman Empire.6

As did the papal claims to rule the institution of the Church in that vast area - to which story we now turn.

Papal

The origins of Roman primacy over the Western church seem to date to the 4th century. Earlier on such pretensions had been stoutly resisted by determined opponents like Cyprian of Carthage, who maintained that the entire corps of bishops exercised collectively 7 the powers that Our Lord gave to Peter. With the waning of the secular Empire in the West, bishops of Rome like Damasus I began subtly to fill the vacuum by asserting the authority of the Roman bishops over the Church in that area. For example, Damasus used the form of the imperial "rescript" when writing to Western bishops (as if the Archbishop of Canterbury today were to mail correspondence to his diocesans on letterhead from 10 Downing Street).8 The first formal statement of Roman supremacy came in the pontificate of Leo I (440-461) who argued the "Petrine Theory" that all the Roman successors of St. Peter legally inherited the full range of the latter's powers and prerogatives. 9 The shifting military and political realities over the next few centuries largely determined when and how this Petrine Theory might be asserted in the Barbarian West. It was not until the egregious Gregory VII (1073-1805) that a robust and potentially enforceable declaration of appeared. Gregory had a position paper called the Dictatus Papae copied into the papal register in 1075, which claimed inter alia:

35 That the Roman Church was founded by God alone. That the Roman pontiff alone can with right be called universal. That he alone can depose or reinstate bishops... That a sentence passed by him may be retracted by no one, and that he himself, alone of all, may retract it. That he himself may be judged by no one...10

And so on in this vein, including the claims to sovereignty over emperors and kings that we noticed above.

In fact Gregory's visions of papal primacy would have remained a pipe dream had it not been for the growth of the papal legal and financial machinery over the next century. With the development of towns, trade and a money during the 12th century, one prominent social phenomenon was the urge (by everyone) to have one's rights confirmed by a credible authority. Barons appealed to kings to confirm their right to collect a toll, towns appealed to kings to confirm their right not to pay that toll - and bishops and abbots appealed to the pope to validate their rights to lands and rents of every kind. If the Archdeacon of claimed the tithes from the village of Great Snoring in 1170, while the local Abbot of Walsingham pressed a rival claim, both sides would laboriously make their way to Rome and plead their case at the papal curia. Naturally the curia charged everyone a fee, despite which this cash-on-the- barrelhead justice grew wildly popular all over the West. Now for the first time the popes enjoyed a steady revenue. 11

With this growing financial and legal power, popes like Innocent III (1198-1216) began to flex their muscles in terms - for example - of appointments to bishoprics. Gregory VII had claimed this right theoretically. Now Innocent III might actually exercise it. Hence the squabble with King John of England over the appointment of to Canterbury in 1207 and following. When the recalcitrant monarch refused to allow Langton to land in England; Innocent put the whole kingdom under an interdict (forbidding the performance of any , masses, marriages or funerals, a thermonuclear salvo). John ultimately caved in, agreed to Langton, and signed the Magna Carta at Runnymead in 1215. This marked the zenith of papal power over the Western Church. Ironically three centuries later, Bad King John would emerge as a national hero in Henry VIII's propaganda campaign against the allegedly overweening pretensions of a megalomaniac papacy over the English Church.12

In the meantime, royal claims over the French (and in the 15th century the Spanish) churches began to nibble away at papal control over the West. To be sure, the Avignon papacy saw the Church's financial machinery hugely refined and extended, though the political prestige and power of the popes waned. During the Avignon "captivity" (for instance) the theory of the "treasury of merits" and the proliferation of turned

36 the flow of gold into the papal coffers into a mighty flood. In 1343 Pope Clement VI issued the bull Unigenitus in which he declared that Christ and the saints had performed a superfluity of meritorious works, that these works had accumulated in a heavenly treasury to which the pope alone held the key, and that the latter could transfer merits via an to the account of any penitent sinner who could afford the transaction. In 1476 Pope Sixtus IV extended the scope of indulgences to , which made possible the sales campaign to which Martin Luther took exception in 1517 ("As soon as coin in coffer rings the soul from purgatory springs!").13

Despite this financial affluence, however, the reach of the Roman papacy was waning in the 14th and 15th centuries. A strong theoretical challenge came from Marsiglio of Padua in the early 1300s, whose Defensor Pacis proposed to reduce the Western Church to a society of poor and pious parish clergy.

Neither the Roman bishop called pope, nor any other bishop or priest or deacon, has or ought to have any rulership or coercive judgment or jurisdiction over any priest or non- priest...14

Ever since the rise of dissident "True Church" movements in the 12th century, opponents of Rome had often played off the "Invisible Church" against the "Visible," naturally to the derogation of the latter. Waldensians and Spiritual Franciscans had claimed identity with the invisible "True Church," i.e. a hidden poor persecuted remnant. John Wyclif contrasted the rich and predatory institutional Church with a Platonic "True Church" in the mind of God, and said that no earthly Church could be legitimate unless it looked a great deal like the Platonic ideal. Naturally the Roman Church responded vigorously to these notions (burning Wyclif's bones posthumously). But the ideas were hard to kill.

The Avignon Papacy and the subsequent Great Schism both encouraged the critics of the Roman primacy and the institutional Church. The Conciliar Movement of the early 15th century suggested for a time that a more collegial episcopal government might replace the papal monarchy, and clean up the mess. By the mid-1400s, the bishops of Rome had beaten back this challenge to their authority. However, at the same time the national monarchs of France and Spain were restricting papal power in France (the 1430s) and Spain (the 1490s) for a variety of reasons, not all of them crass and self-interested.15 The overall trend for the imperial papacy was downward.

The 15th century Wars of the Roses in England distracted the monarchs from renegotiating the split-the-bacon compromise with the papacy in the mid-1200s, while after Bosworth Field Henry VII chose not to rock the boat while he consolidated Tudor hegemony. So papal claims remained, theoretically, in force in England under the young Henry VIII as well. As the latter grew in confidence (not to say avarice and hubris) it might

37 have been foreseen that some re-negotiation of papal authority was overdue, perhaps along the lines of France and Spain. In the event, Henry's personal ambition, his marital tergiversations, and the conquest of Rome in 1527 by Henry's wife's nephew - all these combined to produce a much more radical alternative. In terms of papal authority in England, it was a perfect storm.16

Late Medieval Western Catholic

The final dimension of the pre-Reformation Church in England - which the Reformers opposed and which therefore influenced the ecclesiology of their Church - seems difficult to capture in a few words. Certainly, the late medieval Church was "sacramental" in terms of its accepted raison d'etre. But it was more than that, and the word won't stretch to cover all the elements of pre-Reformation piety to which the Reformers objected. The Church was certainly "sacerdotal" in its conception of the clergy as a spiritually superior caste, and in terms of late medieval that viewed the clergy as a mediatory priesthood. But again, "sacerdotal" is insufficiently broad to describe everything that the Reformers wanted to change. Again, the late medieval Church's theology was arguably "Pelagian" in its doctrine of salvation. True, but once again this characteristic fails to describe certain other prominent facets of pre- Reformation piety, such as its emphasis on the visual rather than the verbal, on "picture piety" as contrasted with the "print piety" of the era to come. So with some reservations, I choose to describe the pre-Reformation English Church as "Late Medieval Western Catholic." At one level this merely states the obvious. At another level it claims too much, suggesting that its variety of religious life represented normative "catholicism." In fact the piety of the Oxford and Cambridge Movements in the mid-19th century would be "catholic" in a very different sense. 15th century "catholicism" was not the only variant of "catholicism" in Anglican history. However, with these diffident qualifications, I describe the religious life - and hence the ecclesiology - of the late medieval English Church as "catholic" in terms of the features that I shall now proceed to enumerate.

First of all, the pre-Reformation English Church was of course "sacramental." Not that preaching played no part in the religious life of the faithful, for mendicant friars set up their portable in marketplaces and pronounced sermons with varying frequency, dependent on geography and on population density and on the distribution of mendicant houses. But all agreed that the celebration of the sacraments, of baptism and particularly the mass, represented the really vital work of the clergy.17 This was the more so as Purgatory bulked ever larger in the late medieval imagination, and as masses for the dead proliferated with the huge expansion of chantries in the mid-14th century and after.18 Of course the expense of books (print came to England only in 1476 with William Caxton’s press in London) and the low level of popular literacy meant that sacramental piety was not threatened in any case by a piety of the Word. This all happened in the century to come.

38 Second, the late medieval English Church was "sacerdotal" in its structure and in its understanding of the clerical vocation. The 4th Lateran Council in 1215 had established that the Church was to be governed by a hierarchy of clergy (this Council was after all the greatest achievement of the most autocratic of popes, Innocent III). Likewise the priesthood19 differed ontologically from the laity in their authority to pronounce the words of consecration by which - standing at the altar in persona Christi - they effected the miracle of and re- presented the sacrifice of Christ on behalf of the sins of humankind.20 Or as the late medieval ordinal put it, "Receive the power of offering sacrifice to God and of celebrating Mass for the living and the dead..."21 There was no doubt that the pre-Reformation clergy were a mediatorial priesthood.

Third, this mediatorial priesthood and their sacrificial masses were logically coherent with the dominant "Pelagian" soteriology of the late medieval Church, which put a premium on human merit. The idea was that God could not "like" a human being who was not in some (however attenuated) sense "like" God in moral purity. Thus a person needed to be cleansed from sin and to acquire "merit," that is to put on the habit of virtue in order to be acceptable to God and to be admitted to . The obvious perception that most people didn't qualify for heaven at death helps explain the doctrine of Purgatory, which played such a large part in the late medieval imagination. As far as the process of salvation went, St. Thomas had preserved the divine initiative by teaching that the initial gift of grace in baptism was wholly unmerited, but that subsequent human cooperation with grace was "fitting" so as to build on God's free gift. However the premier late medieval theologian, the English Franciscan William of Ockham, added a prior step to St. Thomas's . In order for baptism to "take," Ockham, had taught the parents and sponsors needed to do their moral best ("do what was in them") ahead of time, in order to merit baptismal grace for the infant.22 Likewise in later life, the Christian needed to do his or her very best works in order for the mass to "take" and for grace to be dispensed - grace understood as the spiritual power to do more meritorious works. All of this presupposed that human effort initiated and sustained the process of that was necessary in order to qualify for eternal life. The English Reformers would take a very different view of grace and merit, and hence a very different view of the office and work of the clergy.23

Finally, the "catholic" piety of late medieval England put a premium on sight rather than hearing. It was "picture piety" rather than "print piety" for obvious chronological and technological reasons. But even more, it was a tradition of devotion that put more emphasis on the eye than on the ear. The beautiful proliferation of stained-glass windows, the brightly colored wall paintings in church interiors, the statuary (representing both saints and sinners) all caught the eye and taught the Christian Story visually, as they were intended to do. Even the central moment in late medieval piety, the mass, had become primarily a visual experience for the laity. On the one hand, the cognitive barrier of the Latin language inhibited "hearing," as did the eastward posture of the celebrant, and often the auditory separation of the

39 congregation from the altar by the rood screen. The moment when the celebrant elevated the consecrated host became the climax of the rite for the laity and "seeing the host became the high point of lay experience of the Mass."24 As we shall see, Cranmer's reformed eucharistic rite would aim for a very different result.

It is true that the late medieval Church in England did not convince the entire population that its "catholic" piety represented authentic Christianity. The Lollard movement scorned the sacraments, the mediatorial priesthood, and the entire visual apparatus of late medieval worship. Drawing its inspiration from John Wyclif in Oxford in the 1370s, and attracting some initial support amongst the gentry and merchants as well as the rural poor, the Lollard movement fell out of favor with the governing class in the early 1400s and particularly after Sir John Oldcastle's abortive coup d'etat in 1414 (Oldcastle and some other Lollard knights tried to kidnap King Henry V and failed). Lollardy became an underground movement, with centers of strength in the sheep-farming areas of East Anglia and the Cotswold Hills (where traveling wool merchants spread Lollard ideas). It articulated a rough- and-ready lay skepticism about the efficacy of the sacraments, and in particular about the doctrine of transubstantiation. Lollard teachers and tracts encouraged a Biblical rather than a sacramental piety, and members were known to memorize different books of Scripture and repeat them over to themselves (hence "lollard" or "mumbler"). But the movement never seems to have numbered more than a few thousand, amidst a population of some 2.5 million. Its chief accomplishment was to terrify the Church hierarchy, and to elicit some brutal legislation by Parliament against , such as the infamous act De Heretico Comburendo in 1401. In the 1520s the Lollard network of wool merchants would provide a distribution network for William Tyndale’s English New Testament. But otherwise the Lollard movement was a regional oddity rather than a serious challenge to the "catholic" piety of late medieval England.25

For in fact, that piety seems to have enjoyed strong popular support. Eamon Duffy's magisterial The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580 shows conclusively how rich the devotional life was in pre-Reformation England, and how vigorously the laity supported it. The ethereal beauty of Perpendicular wool churches like Long Melford in Suffolk, the lavish decoration of shrines like that of St. Mary in Walsingham, the profoundly moving mystery plays like those of York and Chester - all testified to the enthusiastic participation of the in the religious life of late medieval England. Dom may have a point, that although the eucharistic theology of the late was deplorable by contrast with the rites of the patristic era, it did nevertheless draw people to worship:

There is much scattered but convincing evidence that the great decline in English churchgoing begins in the sixteenth century, not in the eighteenth, as is often supposed. The Reformation found the great mass of the people regular and even somewhat enthusiastic

40 churchgoers... The truth is that the great mediaeval half-christianized bulk of the population had a tradition of mass-going, and perhaps not much more. Admittedly, that is by no means all that the New Testament understands by Christianity. Yet it did bring them to church, and this offered an unparalleled opportunity for teaching them something more.26

As we begin to contemplate the English Church in the age of the Reformation, Dix's cautionary words are worth pondering.

The Reformation (1533-1603)

In response to the late medieval Church they inherited, and hoping to establish a more Biblical model in their emerging nation, the 16th century English Reformers designed a Church that was (1) national (2) monarchial and (3) protestant in certain respects that I shall enumerate below.

National

In the opening salvo of the English Reformation, the famous Act in Restraint of Appeals (1533) asserted that the English nation would now succeed the Roman Church in its imperial pretensions.

Where by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles, it is manifestly declared and expressed, that this realm of England is an empire, and so hath been accepted in the world...27

This was of course a fatuous claim, but Thomas Cromwell had organized Parliament so efficiently that the bill passed despite the absence of any evidence for these historical assertions. As we have seen, both France and Spain had already acted in the 15th century to limit papal jurisdiction in those emerging nations. The circumstances of Henry's marital problems, his need for a male heir, Clement VII’s refusal to annul his marriage with Katharine of Aragon, and Anne Boleyn’s pregnancy in early 1533 all combined to incite Henry VIII to cut England off from Roman jurisdiction entirely. The alternative to Rome in 16th century England was necessarily a national church, not for example religious pluralism. Constantinian assumptions still prevailed. Religious conformity was assumed to be the prerequisite for social order, and the coercive power of the government was the divinely ordered means to achieve that end. So the imperial papacy was out, and the imperial nation was in.

41 Several considerations in the early 16th century supported the idea of an English national church. One was the spread of a standard English vernacular. The importance of the printing press here was obvious. Beginning in the 1520s the foundational documents of an English Protestant national church began appearing in print. William Tyndale's English New Testament (1525) was the first of several vernacular translations of Scripture that culminated in 1539 with the Great Bible, required by royal proclamation to be chained to the lectern in every parish church in the country. Tyndale and his collaborators did for the English language what Luther's German Bible did for that tongue, namely to make one dialect the standard (no matter how many regional tongues continued in use). Cranmer’s Books of Common Prayer (1549 and 1552) built linguistically on the foundation of the English Bible. Initially unpopular as liturgical changes always are, the English Prayer Books gradually worked their way into the national consciousness over the 16th century. So the medium was indeed the message, and the English language in worship and devotion implied an English national church.28

Another foundation of the national church idea was the growth of a new national myth. As part of the Roman Latin Western Church in the middle ages, the story of Christianity in England had been part of that greater narrative. There had been local English chapters, of course, such as the Arthurian legends and the stories of the Anglo-Saxon conversions in 's History of the English Church and People. But there had been no "big story" that had distinguished Christianity in England from the overall history of the faith in the West. In the 1540s a new "national myth" began to emerge in England, a new narrative of a national Christianity that reflected the separation of England from Roman jurisdiction in the previous decade. Henry needed popular support for his coup d'eglise, and his chief minister Thomas Cromwell set out to whip it up. The printing press offered a new medium for royal propaganda, and Cromwell seized it intently.

One of Cromwell's stable of writers was the former Carmelite friar John Bale, whose pamphlets began to rework the history of England in light of the English Reformation. As Bale retold the story, it seemed that Christianity had come to England directly from Jerusalem (bypassing Rome) in AD 63 when Joseph of Arimathea brought the Holy Grail to England's green and pleasant land. Pure New Testament Christianity there held out the longest against Roman imperial pretensions and Roman spiritual corruption, succumbing only in 1066 when William of Normandy conquered the land under the papal banner. King John had been an English hero, defending his realm against the overweening tyranny of the papacy. But as England had held out against Rome the longest, so it threw off the Roman yoke the soonest. In the 1370s the "morning star of the Reformation," the fearless Oxford theologian John Wyclif, attacked the wealth and corruption of the Roman Church, and gave the English people their first version of the Scriptures in the mother tongue. At last King Henry VIII completed the liberation of England from Rome, throwing off the yoke of Roman imperial oppression and beginning the process of cleansing the Temple. To be sure, Henry was not

42 altogether consistent in his role as the new Josiah, and Bale had to flee to the Continent when Henry seemed to regress toward traditional catholicism in his last seven years. The reign of Edward VI (1547-1553) allowed Bale to return and publish more inflammatory works that promoted the new national myth. The reign of Mary (1553-1558) saw him once more in exile. But in old age under , Bale enjoyed a canonry in , and he handed on the torch to his disciple , who gave the new story its definitive form in his famous "Book of Martyrs" (Acts and Monuments, first edition of many editions in 1563).29

In Foxe's narrative, young Queen Elizabeth was the new Deborah. She was appointed by God to lead the English nation in its God-given vocation, to defend and to promote pure New Testament Christianity against the wicked Rome-Madrid axis. Events seemed to support Foxe's story, culminating in the miraculous deliverance of England from the Spanish Armada in 1588. A "Protestant wind" drove the invasion fleet away from English shores and to its ultimate destruction on the rocky coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Evidently the second most widely read book (after the Bible) in Elizabethan England, Foxe's Acts and Monuments identified the English church with the English nation, and both with God's calling to be the New Israel, the Chosen People, and God's chief instrument in the defense and extension of New Testament Christianity. This new national story committed the Church of England likewise to a mission that was Biblical and evangelistic, emphasizing the Word written and the Word preached - not primarily to a sacramental mission or to the sanctification of individuals as they pursued their individual pilgrimages to heaven.30

It is interesting that the 16th century formularies do not offer an explicit apology for the validity of national churches. Cranmer is oblique in the Articles of Religion.

The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments be duly ministered... (Article 19)

Every particular or national church hath authority to ordain, change and abolish ceremonies and rites of the Church ordained only by man's authority... (Article 34)31

In the context of everything else that Cranmer said and did, it seems clear that "congregation" in Article 19 must refer to the national church (and certainly not to a local gathered fellowship as the 17th century Congregationalists would assert!). This reading finds support in Article 34 above, which evidently assumes that "particular" churches are in fact "national" churches. But Cranmer does not argue the point. Nor does he say anything about the invisible church universal, or about the visible fellowship of all faithful people on earth, or about the relationship of either of these to the "particular or national" churches. It may be that Cranmer's silence on these matters reflects a desire to keep our attention on "only the name of Jesus Christ, whereby men may be saved" (Article 18) and to avoid assigning any salvific

43 value to the Church by saying too much about it! Oliver O'Donovan argues that this silence was unfortunate, allowing Protestants to suppose that individuals alone are saved, and that any attention paid to the Church is a waste of time.

The ecclesiastical theory of the Reformation was tacked on as a large and overgrown appendix to an which had no real place for the church. 32

This was much more than Cranmer actually said. But the Reformers' embarrassment about the Church would haunt the Evangelical movement in the Church of England, particularly in the 18th century revivals when individual conversion became the evangelists' central interest.

Meanwhile the closest thing to an official defense of the English Reformation was ’s Apology of the Church of England in 1564. Jewel does acknowledge the existence of the visible fellowship of all faithful people, and the reality of national churches, but he does not define the relationship between the two.

We believe that there is one church of God, and that the same is not shut up (as in times past among the Jews) into some one corner or kingdom, but that it is catholic and universal and dispersed throughout the whole world. So that there is now no nation which can truly complain that they be shut forth and may not be one of the church and people of God.33

So although the Reformers did not explicitly justify the emergence of national churches in the 16th century, they evidently believed in them and saw them as God's instruments for the reform of Christianity in the 16th century. In fact, there was no alternative to a national Church of England, given the prevailing assumption that religious conformity in any realm was necessary for social order.

Monarchial

The Reformers enjoyed a similar confidence about the calling of kings and princes to lead the national Church of England that was replacing the Church of Rome.

The Act of Supremacy (1534) emphatically asserted the right of the English monarch to govern the Church of England.

Albeit the King's Majesty justly and rightfully is and oweth to be the Supreme Head of the Church of England, and so is recognized by the clergy of this realm in their , yet nevertheless for corroboration and thereof, and for increase of virtue in Christ's religion within this realm of England, and to repress and extirp all errors, , and other enormities and abuses heretofore used in the same; be it enacted by authority of this present Parliament, that the King our Sovereign Lord, his heirs and

44 successors, kings of this realm, shall be taken, accepted and reputed the only Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England, called Anglicana Ecclesia, and...shall have full power and authority, from time to time, to visit, repress, redress, reform, order, correct, restrain and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offences, contempts and enormities, whatsoever they be, which by any manner spiritual authority or jurisdiction ought or may be lawfully be reformed...34

Archbishop supported this view of sacral kingship unequivocally. Writing for a bishops' committee on doctrine in 1540, Cranmer argued that:

All Christian princes have committed unto them immediately of God the whole cure of all their subjects, as well concerning the administration of God's word for the cure of souls, as concerning the ministration of things political and civil governance...35

In this regard the English Reformation was recovering the theory of sacral kingship that Charlemagne and the German Emperors had developed in the 8th century, and asserting it against papal pretensions just as those monarchs had done in their time. Henry was claiming for himself what medieval canon lawyers had come to call the potestas jurisdictionis, namely the right to govern the Church in his realm theologically, institutionally and financially - leaving to the clergy the potestas ordinis, the right to celebrate the sacraments and to preach the Word (as interpreted by the monarch).36

William Tyndale had brought this theory of divine-right monarchy to Henry's attention in 1528; in a book entitled The Obedience of a Christian Man. Tyndale put monarchs above any human authority on earth.

Hereby seest thou that the king is in this world without law and may at his lust do right and wrong and shall give accompts but to God only.37

Of course the king ought to obey God's law, but God alone might call the monarch to account if he did not. Here we recall Pope Gregory VII's assertion in 1075, "That he himself may be judged by no one."38 Rejection of papal claims entailed the king's reciprocal assumption of the pope's mantle of authority, and the defense of that prerogative against its previous owner.

This notion of royal headship fitted perfectly into the hierarchical worldview of early 16th century England. Contemporary ideas about social order assumed without question that the earthly social hierarchy mirrored - and absolutely ought to reflect – the divine hierarchy in heaven. As the homily An Exhortation to Obedience (1547) put it,

45 Almighty God hath created and appointed all things in heaven, earth, and waters in a most excellent and perfect order. In heaven he hath appointed distinct and several orders of Archangels and Angels. In earth he hath assigned and appointed Kings, Princes, with other Governors under them, in all good and necessary order...39

This hierarchical vision of reality persisted throughout the 16th century. Shakespeare's famous paean to order, delivered by Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida, argued that

The themselves, the planets, and this centre Observe degree, priority and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order: And therefore is the glorious planet Sol In noble eminence enthron'd and spher'd Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil, And posts, like the commandment of a king, Sans check, to good and bad...40

So it is not surprising to see King Henry VIII turning his "med'cinable eye" to the spiritual welfare of his subjects. The parliamentary acts of the 1530s make the royal initiative in religious matters clear. The Ten Articles Act of 1536 begins,

Henry VIII, by the grace of God, King of England and of France, Defender of the Faith, Lord of Ireland, and in earth Supreme Head of the Church of England, to all and singular, our most loving, faithful and obedient subjects, greeting.

Among the other cures appertaining unto this our princely office, whereunto it hath pleased Almighty God of his infinite mercy and goodness to call us, we have always esteemed and thought, like as we also yet esteem and think, that it most chiefly belongeth unto out said charge diligently to foresee and cause, that not only his most holy Word and commandments of God should most sincerely be believed, and most reverently be observed and kept of our subjects, but also that unity and concord in opinion, namely in such things as doth concern our religion, may increase and go forward.41

A.G. Dickens summarizes Henry's Supreme Headship in the following terms.

He meant to exercise certain spiritual functions hitherto pertaining to the Papacy and the bishops; he annexed the power to correct the opinions of preachers, to supervise the formulation of doctrine, to reform the canon law, to visit and discipline both regular and

46 secular clergy; and even (as happened in the case of John Lambert) to try heretics in person. Henry's theological knowledge and his self-righteousness gave his Supremacy a dangerously personal character...42

Henry's young son Edward VI (1547-1553) did not live long enough to exercise his father's full degree of authority over the Church. And of course Henry's daughter Mary (1553-1558) wholly repudiated her father's assertion of sacral kingship, returning England to papal obedience. But Elizabeth I (1558-1603) revived the Act of Supremacy in her first Parliament, and was every bit as determined as her masterful father to rule and govern the Church of England, though under the less offensive title "Supreme Governor" and with more subtlety and finesse than Henry had ever employed. A.G. Dickens says of Elizabeth's Royal Supremacy,

No longer was the throne occupied by a crowned theologian, confounding Parliaments and bishops with God's learning; its occupant was an adroit and devious politician, operating through the interstices of Statute Law.43

But her premier biographer Wallace MacCaffrey stresses the scope and efficacy of Elizabeth's rule over the Church of England, however deft and subtle its exercise. Describing how the Tudors had assumed the erstwhile authority of the papacy, MacCaffrey says,

Behind the bare words of the statutes lay a far-reaching and novel conception of the relations of church and state, to which Elizabeth was profoundly committed. Its basic assertion was the overriding responsibility which under God rested with her for the regulation of religion in all external matters. Those external matters were extended to include all forms of public worship and church government. Hence, the lay subject in attending church, or the priest in celebrating the sacraments by the prescribed rite, was merely fulfilling a civic obligation. He was called upon for a passive obedience to the ecclesiastical supremacy as unquestioning as that by which he acknowledged the Queen's civil authority.44

With all the preceding in mind, we can read the Articles of Religion on the Royal Supremacy in context. Article 37 (passed by Parliament in 1571) asserts that the English monarchs are claiming the potestas jurisdictionis, acknowledging that the potestas ordinis remains a clerical prerogative.

The Queens Majesty hath the chief Power in this Realm of England and other her dominions, unto whom the chief Government of all Estates of this realm, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Civil, in all Causes doth appertain, and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any Foreign Jurisdiction.Where we attribute to the Queens Majesty the chief Government, by which Titles we understand the minds of some slanderous folks to be offended: we give

47 not to our Princes the ministering either of God’s Word, or of the Sacraments, the which thing the Injunctions also lately set forth by Elizabeth our Queen do most plainly testifie: but only that Prerogative which we see to have been given always to all godly Princes in holy Scriptures by God himself, that is, that they should rule all Estates and Degrees committed to their charge by God, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Temporal, and to restrain with the Civil Sword the stubborn and evil doers.45

This was the import of the oath required to be sworn by all ordinands, in the form prescribed by the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

I A.B. do utterly testifie and declare in my conscience, That the Kings Highness is the only Supream Governor of this Realm, and of all other His Highnesses Dominions and Countries, as well in all Spiritual and Ecclesiastical things, or causes, as Temporal...46

In writing of Thomas Cranmer's commitment to the theory of divine-right kingship, Diarmaid MacCulloch acknowledges how alien that notion sounds to 21st century ears. Referring to Cranmer's work for the doctrine commission in 1540 MacCulloch says,

It is perhaps in this snapshot of his opinions that Cranmer is at his most remote from modern Christians. Nowhere today can one find such a theory of royal supremacy in the Christian world. His premise about the divine ordering of society through Christian princes is diametrically opposed to the Western Church's post-1789 agonizing about its links with the State...Equally, his view of royal supremacy as the natural condition of the Church puts an interesting question mark against a common assumption among humanist reformers, that the apostolic Church of the first generation should be the ultimate court of appeal in disputes about the nature of the contemporary Church. In Cranmer's eyes, the apostolic Church was imperfect, incomplete.47

Any modern Anglican ecclesiology that takes the Reformation formularies seriously will have to address the distance between 16th century ideas of divine-right national monarchy and our modern convictions regarding the separation of Church and State.

One corollary to the 16th century belief in royal headship was the idea that details of were negotiable, or . That term did not imply that such matters were unimportant. Indeed they might be arguably needful for the health and well-being of the Church. But these "things indifferent" were neither specified by Scripture nor enumerated in the Creeds. Therefore they might for good cause be decreed by the appropriate ecclesiastical authority - in the case of 16th century England, the monarch.

48 As Philip Thomas writes in The Study of Anglicanism,

If the principle underlying the establishment of Reformed Catholicism in England was the concept of the national church, then the procedure depended on the belief, already noted, that many elements of church life were 'in their own nature indifferent' and so could be arranged as matters of convenience rather than conviction. The idea of adiaphora or 'things indifferent' had been advanced on the continent by Melanchthon and uttered in passing by Calvin. It received a distinctive exposition in an appendix to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer and this was expanded as part of the Preface to the Book of Common Prayer in 1662... What was argued for the Book of Common Prayer could also be held to apply to the structures and offices of the Church: its threefold ministry, episcopal ordination, details of vesture and ritual in worship, along with the continued existence of cathedrals and universities, the administrative hierarchy of deans, chapters and archdeacons, and it would appear, much of the old parochial system of pastoral organization.48

Thomas Cranmer certainly assumed that some form of ecclesiastical government was required, and he supported the threefold order of bishops, presbyters and deacons. Indeed he asserted its1st century provenance.

It is evident unto all men, diligently readinge holye scripture, and auncient aucthors, that fro the Apostles tyme, there hathe been these orders of Ministers in Christes church, Bisshoppes, Priestes, and Deacons...49

But he did not assert the threefold order as iure divino or as necessary to salvation. Geoffrey Bromiley says of the Archbishop,

Cranmer himself favored a retention of the threefold form, which as he saw it had obviously come down from primitive and apostolic days. But the succession as Cranmer saw it had historical and pragmatic rather than doctrinal significance. Neither the validity nor, if the church itself so determines, the regularity of the ministry is affected in the least by the absence of historical linkage. The preservation of the threefold order is plainly regarded as desirable, but it is not of absolute necessity.50

In the Elizabethan period famously wrote The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity to defend the threefold order against the in the Church of England, who were pressing for a more aristocratic and presbyterian (rather than a hierarchical and episcopal) form of church government. But while the Puritans argued their case (feebly, as Hooker points out) from the New Testament, and commended as iure divino, Hooker stoutly refused to claim a similar for episcopal government. It was specifically required by neither Scripture nor Creed, but stood in the category of those things "indifferent" which the Queen's majesty might legitimately prescribe for the well-being of the Church.

49 To make new articles of faith and doctrine no man thinketh it lawful; new laws of government what commonwealth or church is there which maketh not either at one time or another? "The rule of faith," saith Tertullian, "is but one, and that alone immoveable and impossible to be framed or cast anew" The law of outward order and polity not so.51

Though the magisterial English Reformers all agreed with Hooker on this point, they were neither casual nor irresponsible in their attitude toward church polity.

In their awareness of God's "indifference," or in the knowledge of their adiaphoristic freedom, he English Reformers, therefore, did not see any excuse for lapsing into some quietistic, cynical or irresponsible mood in the realm of adiaphora.52

But provided that the monarch's arrangements in ecclesiastical polity did not specifically contradict the Word of God, or establish some institution or practice that Scripture specifically forbad,53 the Supreme Head was at liberty to order the outward polity of the Church in such a way that God's people might be edified, and their spiritual life conducted with decency and in good order.

Reformed Protestant

Like the word "catholic" that I have used to describe the late medieval Church, the term "Reformed Protestant" is also a catch-all term that comprehends a number of phenomena. Following the structure I used to characterize the pre-Reformation Church on pages 9-12 above, I shall suggest first of all that the Reformers' Church of England replaced the former "sacramental" emphasis with a combination of both word and sacrament. Second, in contrast to the "sacerdotal" understanding of the clergy's role in the late medieval Church, I will suggest that the Reformers understood their ordained leaders to be "ministers of word and sacrament," with a particular emphasis upon the parish as the specific venue for the celebration of both. Third, in contrast to the Pelagian soteriology of the recent past, the Reformers' Church was built upon a "solifidian" understanding of the Gospel (sorry, I needed a single adjective that described "justification by grace through faith") that was initially influenced by German in the 1540s, but after that was deeply conditioned by the Rhineland and Swiss Reformers. And finally, the 16th century Church of England increasingly promoted a piety that was "verbal" more than "visual," with the word "verbal" understood to include both hearing and reading the Word of God.

First of all, Cranmer's Article 19 redefined the True Church in terms of word and sacrament together, as the coordinate whereby God stirs up in us the faith by which we are saved.

50 The visible Church of Christ is a Congregation of faithful men, in which the pure word of God is Preached and the Sacraments be duly ministered, according to Christ’s Ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.54

The previous Articles 1-18 offer a middle-of-the-road Swiss/Rhineland summary55 of the "pure word of God" in the Bible, and (in Article 6) argue that the Scriptures so understood are wholly sufficient for salvation. Nothing can be required for salvation that cannot be proved directly from Scripture. Later on in Article 34 Cranmer addresses Church Tradition, hitherto seen by the late medieval Church as a source of revelation coordinate with Scripture. Nothing devised by purely human wisdom may be enforced as essential to the Faith, as Cranmer has already made clear. However, traditions are necessary and legitimate, says Cranmer, and may be established and altered by proper authority from time to time, as long as nothing be taught that directly contradicts Scripture. Scripture reigns supreme, then, both in a prescriptive sense apropos the heart of the Faith, and in a restrictive sense vis-a-vis human traditions that might contradict or occlude that Faith. So the "pure word of God preached" is the first mark of the true and reformed Church.

As a corollary to the Articles' definition of the True Church, the reformers would later assert that the true "apostolical succession" lay in fidelity to the Word of God and not in any tactile connection with the Apostles. Bishop John Hooper would assert that

I believe that the church is bound to no sort of people or any ordinary succession of bishops, cardinals and such like, but unto the only word of God.56

Likewise the Elizabethan theologian William Whitaker affirmed that

...we regard not the external succession of places or persons, but the internal one of faith and doctrine.57

By way of returning to the pure Word of God, the Articles are at pains to define the sacraments, and cut down the forest of traditions that had obscured their meaning and their purpose over the last few hundred years. On the one hand, Cranmer wants to exclude any devaluation of the sacraments, to which the Swiss Reformation had been prone. Article 25 rejects the Zwinglian viewpoint:

Sacraments ordained of Christ, be not only badges and tokens of Christian means profession: but rather they be certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace, and Gods good will towards us...58

51 Sacraments are "effectual" and God does use created material things to communicate His grace to us. On the other hand, Cranmer wants to teach clearly that the point of the sacraments is to increase our faith in God's attitude of grace, and not primarily to be conduits of a grace understood (as in the late middle ages) as a substance that empowers us to perform good works.

...by the which He doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our faith in Him.59

Article 25 goes on in a Reformation vein to reduce the number of sacraments to the two that Christ ordained with a promise, Baptism and the Lord's Supper - both defined as "effectual signs" that stir up faith. In Articles 27-31 Cranmer goes on to characterize both sacraments further, and to exclude certain errors that had crept into the teaching of the late medieval Church regarding their nature and effect. In particular (Article 31) Cranmer is at pains to reject the "Sacrifice of Masses."Christ's sacrifice on Calvary was wholly and exhaustively effectual, and the Lord's Supper did not repeat it.

The offering of Christ once made, is the perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual, and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone. Wherefore the Sacrifice of Masses, in the which it was commonly said that the priests did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain and guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.60

So in the true reformed Church, the sacraments were intimately linked with the word of God, and their intent was to stir up and increase that faith which the word of God conveyed. This insistence on the coordinate means of grace, word and sacrament together, naturally influenced the new understanding of the clergy's nature and task, in the reformed Church of England.

The verbal-and-sacramental nature of the reformed Church of England meant that its ordained leaders had a dual task. They were no longer "sacerdotal" or a mediatorial priesthood, but rather "ministers of the Gospel" which they conveyed through both word and sacrament. In the old medieval ordination rite, the Bishop had given the newly ordained a and a paten with the words,

Receive the power of offering sacrifice to God and of celebrating Mass for the giving and the dead...61

52 In Cranmer's Ordinal the Bishop delivers a Bible instead and charges the newly ordained,

Take thou Authority to preach the Word of God, and to minister the holy Sacraments in the Congregation, where thou shalt be lawfully appointed thereunto.62

The symbolism could not be clearer. The primary task is now to preach the word, with the sacraments in support of this primary ministry. And lest the sacraments continue to be seen as independent of the word and free-standing, as for example masses for the dead celebrated in a medieval chantry chapel without a congregation, the Bishop emphasizes that the venue for the ministry of word and sacrament is to be the congregation.

Cranmer always had a fine sense of the possible, and how far he might press his conservative rural congregations at any given time. His reformed Ordinal (1550) retains the old title "priest" rather than a more protestant word such as "minister."Cranmer could of course contend that "priest" derived etymologically from the Anglo-Saxon preost, which in turn came from the Greek presbyteros or "."Just as the Ordinal prescribed many of the old medieval , to make it easier for congregations to accept an English Prayer Book, so Cranmer retained the old term for the parish clergy. However in the1550 Ordinal, the Bishop's exhortation to the ordinand makes it clear that the ministry is not sacerdotal but verbal and didactic and homiletic and evangelistic.

And now again we exhort you, in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you have in remembrance into how high a dignity, and to how weighty an office and charge ye are called: That is to say, to be messengers, watchmen and stewards of the Lord; to teach and to premonish, to feed and provide for the Lords family; to seek for Christ’s sheep that are dispersed abroad, and for his children who are in the midst of this naughty world, that they may be saved through Christ for ever.63

Dom Gregory Dix famously argued that Cranmer's "ministers of word and sacrament" were merely acting as civil servants of the monarch.

The ministers of the eucharist are thus acting as such simply as officials of the secular government of the Christian state in Cranmer's opinion.64

He (sc. Cranmer) was faithful throughout his career to his conception of the clergy as the king's "ministers of religion" to his subjects, as his judges were the king's "ministers of justice" to them. The clergy administered the king's laws and commands in things spiritual as his other officers administered his law and commands in things temporal.65

53 But this judgment seems unduly harsh. If as in Article 19 the marks of the true Church were the preaching of the pure word of God and the due administration of the sacraments, then those appointed to those ministries bore a huge spiritual responsibility and occupied a high ministerial office indeed. As "messengers, watchmen and stewards" of the means of grace, the clergy were no mere civil servants. Nor were they simply laypeople acting pro tem in a particular task, as 16th century egalitarians (some Anabaptists for instance) were apt to suggest. Thus while the English Reformation repudiated the notion of a mediatorial priesthood, identifying the clergy rather as "ministers of word and sacrament," prophetic and pastoral rather than priestly, that redefinition did not diminish the high importance of their office.

The role of the clergy as ministers of word and sacrament may be clarified if we consider the Eucharistic rite in Cranmer's 1552 Book of Common Prayer. I suggested above that the reformed Church of England was "solifidian" rather than Pelagian in its doctrine of salvation. The Church's commitment to "justification by grace through faith" is nowhere more clearly expressed than in the reformed Lord's Supper in 1552, in its contrast with the transitional rite of 1549. Comparing the different structures of the two rites requires a supernatural gift of concentration, but that gift is worth requesting and exercising.

In the 1552 rite there is a triple "sin-grace-faith cycle"67that underscores the intention of the service, namely "to give liturgical expression to the doctrine of justification by faith alone."68 In the sequences of Decalogue-Gospel-Creed, Confession-Absolution-Sanctus and -Administration/Reception of Elements-Gloria in Excelsis, Cranmer intends to underscore the Reformation belief that God works in our hearts by (1) bringing our utter helplessness to mind (2) communicating the Gospel of forgiveness to us and thus (3) empowering us to confess, serve and praise Him. We cannot truly praise God until we have been humbled, forgiven and empowered.

Likewise in the 1552 rite, nothing stands between the Words of Institution and the Administration and Reception. The third repetition of the "sin-grace-faith cycle" makes it absolutely clear that God's purpose in the rite is to enable the forgiven sinner - and recipient of the holy elements - to praise God and to serve Him immediately. The climax of the 1552 Lord's Supper does not come (as in the medieval Western eucharistic rites) in the Words of Institution whereby Christ becomes present on the altar, and in the elevation of the consecrated host that immediately ensues. The climax of the 1552 rite comes in the Reception of the Elements by the believer and his or her immediate response of praise.

54 1549 1552

Lord' s Prayer (by priest alone) Lord's Prayer (by priest alone) Coll ect for Purity (priest facing altar) (north side of table) Decalogue with responses Psalm/Introit

Kyrie Gloria in Excelsis Coll ects for the Day & the King Collects for the Day & the King Epistle Epistle Gospel Gospel Nice ne Creed Sermon Sermon Exhortation

Offertory of Alms (to poor box not altar) Offertory of Alms (to poor box not Holy Sursum Corda Table) Sanctus Praye r for Church & Nation Prayer for Church & Nation Tha nksgiving for Mary, Jesus, Saints Praye rs for the Dead (no purgatory) Words of Institution (with Epiclesis) Oblation of Ourselves and Elements Lord' s Prayer Pascha Nostrum Invi tation to Confession Conf ession and Absolution Comfortable Words Prayer of Humble Access Exhortation

Invitation to Confession Confession and Absolution Comfortable Words Sursum Corda Sanctus Prayer of Humble Access Words of Institution (no Epiclesis) Administration/Reception of Elements Administration/Reception of Elements

Prayer of Thanksgiving/Oblation of Ourselves

Post-Communion Verses of Scripture Prayer of Thanksgiving Gloria in Excelsis 66 Blessing Blessing

55 Not only the structure of the 1552 rite but also its language underscored Cranmer's new emphasis on justification by grace through faith. First of all, Cranmer omitted the Epiclesis, which had invoked the Holy Spirit upon the bread and wine, praying that they be transformed into Christ's body and blood. In the 1549 rite Cranmer had written,

Heare us (o merciful father) we besech thee; and with thy holy spirite and worde, vouchsafe to bl+esse and sanc+tifie these thy giftes, and creatures of bread and wyne, that they may be unto us the bodye and bloude of thy moste derely beloved sonne Jesus Christ...69

In 1552 Cranmer emphasized not real presence but remembrance.

Heare us O mercyefull father wee beseche thee, and graunt that wee, receyuing these thy creatures of bread and wyne, according to thy sonne our Sauioure Jesus Christ's holy institution, in remembraunce of his death and passion, maye be partakers of his most blessed body and bloude...70

Likewise in the 1552 rite Cranmer relocated and redefined the Oblation. In 1549 Cranmer left this passage in the Canon, in accordance with the Western tradition.

And here wee offer and present unto thee (O Lorde) our selfe, our soules and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and liuely sacrifice unto thee: humbly beseeching thee that whosoeuer shallbe partakers of thys holy Communion, maye worthily receiue the most precious body and bloude of thy sonne Jesus Christe...71

In 1552 Cranmer removed this entire Oblation from the Canon and placed it after the Reception of the Elements, in a new post-Communion prayer of thanksgiving. He thereby emphasized that we cannot offer ourselves to God before we have received His pardon and grace, confirmed by the bread and the wine that we have just received.

O Lorde and heauenly father, we thy humble seruants entirely desire thy fatherly goodness, mercifully to accept this our Sacrifice of prayse and thanksgeuing: most humbly beseeching thee to graunt, that by the merits and death of thy sonne Jesus Christ, and through fayth in his bloud, we and al thy whole church may obtayne remission of our synnes. And here we offer and presente unto thee, O Lord, our selfes, our soules and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and liuely Sacrifice unto thee...72

Finally and most famously, Cranmer rewrote the Words of Administration with which the celebrant delivered the bread and wine. In 1549 he wrote,

56 The body of our Lorde Jesus Christe which was geuen for thee, preserve thy bodye and soule unto euerlasting lyfe.

The blood of our Lorde Jesus Christe which was shed for thee, preserue thy body nd soule unto euerlasting lyfe.73

In 1552 Cranmer excluded the possibility of any corporal presence in the elements, putting all the emphasis on remembrance and faith.

Take and eate this, in remembraunce that Christ dyed for thee, and feede on him in they hearte by faythe, with thankesgeuving.

Drinke this in remembraunce that Christ's bloude was shed for thee, and be thankefull.74

The role of the celebrant in the 1552 rite was to preside over a threefold "sin-grace-faith cycle," reminding the congregation of their helplessness in sin, the free offer of God's pardon symbolized by the elements, and the recipients' immediate faithful response of praise and thanksgiving. The erstwhile mediatorial sacrificing priest of the medieval rite was transformed into the Reformed minister of word and sacrament, whose principal role was constantly to remind the congregation of justification by grace through faith.

It should be clear, finally, that Cranmer's liturgical reforms entailed a shift from a visual piety to a verbal religion. The congregation is to hear the "threefold sin-grace-faith cycle" in the Lord's Supper, not to see it. The Epistle and Gospel are read in English, and of course the sermon is likewise pronounced in a tongue "understood of the people" (Article 24). The "verbal" nature of the English Reformation did not require that the faithful be literate, though of course literacy increased over the 16th century. In 1539 when Henry VIII ordered that the Great Bible be chained to the lectern in every parish church, he assumed that someone in every village would be literate and would read aloud to anyone who cared to gather in the nave. Later on in Elizabeth's reign, the Puritan catechetical model depicted the father of the household, seated with the Geneva Bible open on his knees, instructing his household (wife, children, servants) who were seated around him. Fides ex auditu...faith came by hearing. "And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?" (Romans 10:14). The primary task of the minister (lay but especially ordained) was to open the Word of God to his congregation. "Justification by grace through faith" went hand in hand with a piety that was now primarily verbal.

57 Summary

Reviewing the ecclesiology of the English Reformation, we can see that the Tudor Reformers (and the Formularies that they composed) emphasized several important propositions.

(1) The esse of the Church (the marks of a true Church) were the faithful proclamation of the pure Word of God and the right administration of the Sacraments (now reduced to Baptism and the Lord's Supper). Some polity and some form of ecclesiastical discipline were assumed to be necessary, but their precise shape did not lie at the heart of the Church's identity. The Church's polity was an adiaphoron.

(2) Under Christ, the Head of the English Church was the divine-right ruler whom God had appointed to govern the nation, in both its civil and ecclesiastical dimensions. This ruler did not claim the potestas ordinis, or the right to ordain and to celebrate the sacraments. But the monarch did wield the potestas jurisdictionis, or the power to govern the Church (generally through Parliament) in all other respects: the formulation of its doctrine, the nomination of its leaders, the administration of its property, and the supervision of its courts of ecclesiastical justice.

(3) Under the aegis of the sovereign ruler, and by that monarch's provision, the ancient three-fold order of bishops, priests and deacons persisted, and the apostolic succession of bishops was maintained. The English Reformers argued for the antiquity of this polity, and its conformity to Scriptural teaching. However they did not regard it as iure divino or the esse of the Church. As an adiaphoron its justification was pragmatic, and it could in theory be altered at the discretion of the monarch.

(4) The Church stood in succession to the Apostles not by any tactile chain of hands, but rather through fidelity to the Word of God that the Apostles had been commissioned to preach, and which they had handed on to their followers.

(5) The ordained ministers of the Church understood their vocation to be defined by the marks of a true Church. Bishops and presbyters were ministers of Word and Sacrament, they were pastors and teachers and not sacrificing priests as hitherto. (The diaconate remained a transitional order).

(6) The Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper were understood to be "visible words," and effectual means of grace whereby faith in God's promises was stirred up in the recipients. In particular, the Lord's Supper was intended to rehearse the reality of justification by grace through faith, enabling the forgiven sinner to thank and praise God for the "full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction" effected by His Son on

58 the Cross. The eucharistic rite involved a sacrifice in two ways, a "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving" and the "reasonable, holy and lively sacrifice" of the participants' souls and bodies. The rite did not entail a propitiatory repetition of Calvary in any sense.

After the passing of the Tudor era in 1603, the theory of divine right monarchy proved increasingly fragile, though the monarch continued to be Head of the Church in some sense. And the Church remained distinctly Protestant in its theology and worship through the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries.

59 The Ecclesiology of the Evangelical Revival

The second chapter in the history of Anglican began in the 18th century with the Evangelical Revival. Usually dated from the conversion of George Whitefield in 1735, the Evangelical Revival initially worked in tandem with the Methodist movement that began with ’s conversion three years later. The two streams parted company in the 1740s over theological issues (e.g. Whitefield's vs. John Wesley's ) and the Wesleyan movement subsequently developed into a third strand of Anglicanism. (The story of Wesleyan Holiness/Pentecostal/Charismatic Anglicanism forms a separate paper in the work of the Task Force on Holy Orders).

The Evangelical Revival initially included those clergy who remained within the Church of England after a conversion experience. In the it began to attract lay support with the accession of and his friends and allies. Expanding their interests beyond the issue of individual conversion, Wilberforce & Co. undertook the wholesale reform of British society, most notably in the crusade against slavery. The abolitionist movement came to a climax in July, 1833 with Parliament's move to eradicate slavery completely within the nascent British Empire.

The abolition of slavery (as Wilberforce lay on his deathbed) signaled the rise of Anglican Evangelicals as a decisive force in English society. But developments in English society and in the Church around this time would drastically alter the environment in which the Anglican Evangelicals were working. After the 1830s Anglican Evangelicalism became less creative in terms of domestic reform (while gradually more successful in overseas missions), more an ecclesiastical party at home, and increasingly reactive. So the year 1833 marks a convenient terminus ad quem for the revival phase of the Anglican Evangelical movement.

During this near-century the Anglican Evangelical revivalists evinced a great deal of interest in the individual nature of a true Christian, and practically no interest in the nature of a true Church. To understand this shift in attitude we must go back to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, and track the tumultuous upheavals in 17th century British society and its established Church.

The Church of England 1603-1833

With the passing of Elizabeth I, the Tudor model (national, monarchial, and protestant) began to weaken. Then it collapsed completely for a time in the 1640s and 1650s during the Civil War and the military reign of . The Restoration of Charles II

60 in 1660 restored the Tudor Gestalt temporarily. But then the “” of 1688- 89 abolished the divine-right monarchy that had been central to the Tudor vision of the Church. And the Toleration Act of 1689 acknowledged that the Church of England was no longer coterminous with the nation.

And finally, with the turn of the century, the English ruling class grew tired of religious controversy. theology agreed to ignore contentious issues such as ecclesiastical polity, and to focus the Church's preaching on the duty of the lower classes to obey their betters, and to accept their place in society. The Church of England went to sleep.75 It remained the established Church. In theory the vast majority of English people belonged to it. The Monarch continued in some sense to be its "Supreme Head." The Protestant theology of its 16th century formularies remained in force. But its paralysis (as some thought, its rigor mortis) prevented it from responding to the seismic changes of the early Industrial Revolution - and from profiting from the energies that erupted in the 1730s with the Evangelical Revival. Consequently although the leaders of the Revival took the Church of England for granted, they thought it no more worthy of theological attention than turnips or the tepid climate of their island.76

Let us see how the threefold Tudor model fared over these two centuries of revolutionary change.

National

Elizabeth I (1558-1603) had successfully defended the national Church of England's unity on two fronts. Vis-a-vis Roman Catholic dissent, Elizabeth profited from the Papacy's foolish bull of excommunication in 1570 and was able to punish recusancy as treason, which she did with unhesitating brutality. Vis-a-vis Puritan internal dissent, Elizabeth was able to contain their impatient desire for more preaching, more Bible study, and more parish renewal by using the Church courts to punish dissent, and by manipulating Parliament and denying the Puritans their political pulpit. In any case the Puritans needed Elizabeth desperately. She was the new Deborah, and only her single heartbeat separated England from Mary Queen of Scots and a violent re-imposition of Roman Catholicism... and the continental Wars of Religion. So the vast majority of Puritans remained within the Church of England during Elizabeth's reign, and only a few dozen left the Church by emigrating to Holland. Elizabeth's consummate political skill kept the national Church of England intact during her long forty-four year reign.77

Everything changed with the new Stuart dynasty in 1603. James I fancied himself a skilled theologian, but failed to convince his English subjects that he was a competent monarch. He instantly began to squander all the good will that Queen Bess had carefully accumulated over the course of her long reign. He wasted the taxes that Parliament

61 unwillingly granted him, spending vast sums on his handsome young gentleman favorites and his elaborate hunting lodges. He devised new sources of revenue (of dubious legality) when Parliament balked at further taxation. He suborned his bench of royal justices when his subjects sued for redress. And worst of all, he fiddled while Germany burned in the opening stages of the Thirty Years' War. Although his daughter was married to the Protestant champion after the "defenestration of " in 1618, James utterly refused to send her assistance when the Roman Catholic armies began to obliterate her cause. It seemed clear that James was betraying England's historic vocation to defend the Gospel against the wicked Rome-Madrid axis. So in James's reign the Puritan opposition began to gather force and coherence, and to threaten the unity of the national Church.78

James died in 1625 before the volcano exploded. His son Charles I (1625-1649) was arguably more upright in his personal behavior than his dissolute father. But Charles was almost supernaturally ignorant of his subjects' fears of an absolute monarch and of an aggressive international Roman Catholicism. When Parliamentary critique came to a head in 1629, Charles simply announced that he would never call it again. (This was the point at which 20,000 Puritans began to migrate across the Atlantic to New England, to build a Holy Commonwealth that would support the national vocation and defend the Gospel that Old England was betraying). Charles actively fostered an attempted revival of "catholic" piety by his Archbishop . Laud's silver communion ware and his east-facing "altars" enraged the English population and never got much traction, but crystallized the nation's fears that the Rome-Madrid axis was subverting England's national freedom. It did not help that Charles married a French Roman Catholic princess, whose chaplain said mass for her every day at Court. Finally Charles exceeded himself in foolishness and tried to force the Book of Common Prayer on the Scots nation in 1637. The Scots unanimously took the National Covenant and invaded the north of England. At this point Charles had to recall Parliament and ask for taxes to raise an army. Parliament balked, and matters so deteriorated over the next four years that in 1642, Charles abandoned London for the Midlands and declared war on Parliament.79

The Civil War and Interregnum saw the temporary collapse of the national Church of England. Initially Parliament - as the price of an alliance with the Scots army - decreed that England become Presbyterian, at least in those regions under Parliamentary control. But within the Parliamentary armies a more radically democratic movement was brewing, calling for the independence of individual Congregational churches. After General Oliver Cromwell literally and symbolically decapitated the English Monarchy in 1649 (declaring Charles a "man of blood" who had made war on his subjects) the religious life of the nation became an ecclesiastical zoo. Banning only Roman Catholicism and the erstwhile Church of England, Cromwell the "Lord Protector" allowed almost everything else. The 1650s saw the proliferation of effervescent lower-class sects throughout the land, such as the , the Ranters, the Sweet Singers of Israel, and the Adamites who worshiped in the nude. When

62 Cromwell died in 1658, his appalled generals finally concluded that the recovery of social and religious order in England required the restoration of the Stuart monarchy. In 1660 Charles II landed at Dover.80

Unfortunately Charles was a secret Roman Catholic. Receiving a clandestine subsidy from the French King Louis XIV, Charles was committed to work for the freedom of Roman Catholics in England. This meant that Charles would need to grant similar toleration to the more sedate and socially established Protestant sects from the Cromwellian interregnum, such as the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists. Political realities prevented Charles from achieving all his goals. The so-called “” (1662 and following) was dominated by the Church of England squirearchy. Certainly no Roman Catholics were to be tolerated. But in the Parliament grudgingly allowed the Protestant "dissenters" some leeway under the so-called Clarendon Code, though with severe disabilities and penalties. The point was that now the Church of England could no longer claim to be coterminous with the English nation. Its "national" identity was compromised.81

Charles II went to his reward in 1685, succeeded by his openly Roman Catholic brother James II. When James's queen produced a baby son - threatening a "papist" Stuart monarchy in perpetuity - the political nation rose up and ejected the Stuarts inviting the Dutch Calvinist William of Orange (and his English queen Mary) to take the English throne in 1689. As part of the agreement, William and Mary had to accept a constitutional monarchy: no more pretensions to ruling by divine right, and therefore no more extra- Parliamentary royal legislation. Part of the deal entailed a perpetuation and extension of the toleration granted to socially acceptable Protestants in the 1670s. The Toleration Act of 1689 admitted that the "national" identity of the English Church no longer reflected reality.82

But no obvious alternative identity emerged. The English upper classes were exhausted by internecine Christian violence. They longed to change the subject. With Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica in 1687, human reason seemed to offer a new First Principle on which to build European civilization. The political nation lapsed into Latitudinarian torpor.83 Likewise neither the House of Orange nor its Hanoverian successor displayed much interest in reforming the Church of England. So the demise of the Church's identity as the nation at prayer went unaddressed until the 1830s.

Yet the Church of England remained intertwined with government and society. At the highest level, the bishops sat in the . In the 18th century they were expected to vote at the direction of whichever political leaders had secured their appointment by the monarch. The Church's own Convocations met only once between 1717 and 1851, as government politicians feared their aptitude for unruly behavior.

63 Therefore Parliament assumed the responsibility for legislating on the Church's behalf. An act of Parliament was required, for example, before a new parish could be established and a parish church be erected.

At the local level, the Church was likewise intertwined with the squirearchy that controlled shire and village politics. The bishops were great lords, and enjoyed astronomical revenues. More than half of the patrons of local livings (i.e. those with the right to appoint parish clergy) were wealthy laypeople. Therefore the Church offered a viable career for younger sons of these gentry who owned these "advowsons." Jane Austin's tart depiction of early 19th century parish clergy would have described matters equally well a century earlier. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that most parish clergy promoted the interests of their patrons, instructed the poor in "duty" and "obedience" from the pulpit, and otherwise performed their duties with some formality (or hired cheap substitutes).

For all this interdependence with English society, the Church in the 18th century was in trouble. Its finances were a mess. The bishops were filthy rich, and defended their incomes fiercely. Almost half the parishes, on the other hand, lacked endowments that could provide a living wage. Hence the twin scandals of pluralism and non-residence, that had weakened the Church for centuries. Clergy sought multiple "livings" so that their families might survive. Although these parishes occasionally lay nearby so that one vicar might serve several congregations, generally pluralism meant non-residence, and the employment of "landless" clergy to visit the parishes and read Morning Prayer for a pittance.84

This social captivity meant that the Church of England was powerless to adapt, when the early Industrial Revolution began to drive the peasantry out of their villages into "dark satanic mills" and into the toxic new cities that sprang up to house them. Likewise the Church of England was powerless to draw institutionally upon the effervescent energies of the Evangelical Revival when it erupted in the 1730s. The Methodist movement would turn these energies to good use - but largely outside the Church. Late in the 18th century, Anglican laymen and laywomen would apply these energies to the transformation of English society, for example by Parliamentary legislation. Again - largely outside the Church.

So in the age of the Evangelical Revival (1735-1833) the Church of England was mostly problematical: enculturated, handcuffed by private financial interests, incapable of reforming itself. In the age of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, to be sure, many Evangelical leaders came to see the Church's glacial immobility as a positive advantage, as an inhibitor of radical social change. But as a subject for theological inquiry, let alone as an incentive to new life in Christ, the Church failed to excite much Evangelical interest.

64 Then in the late 1820s, forces for reform began to address both the English political system and the Church of England as well. Roman Catholics had been excluded from English political life since the Test and Corporation Acts in the 1670s, and this exclusion had come to seem more and more anomalous. Parliament abolished those acts in 1828, and specifically emancipated the Roman Catholics in 1829. This bill tacitly abandoned the erstwhile monopoly that the Church of England had enjoyed, over the religious life of the country, and put paid to the Elizabethan fiction that Church and Nation were one. It also called into question the legitimacy of King-in-Parliament as the Supreme Head of the English Church. How could a body that included Roman Catholics (and soon, Jews and even atheists) claim to legislate for the Church of England? Given the historic English propensity to retain obsolete institutions, this anomaly persisted well into the 20th century. But the old Tudor threefold model had now become problematical. The environment had altered decisively, in which the Evangelical revivalists had hitherto lived and ministered.85

Monarchial

Much of what we have rehearsed above, about the Church of England's obsolescent national identity, applied to an eclipse of its monarchial leadership in the 17th and 18th centuries as well.

Over the period 1603-1689 the English monarchs included, in turn, an erstwhile Scots Presbyterian, then an Anglican of "catholic" tastes, then a Congregationalist general who refused the throne, then two Roman Catholics and finally a Dutch Calvinist. This rag-tag succession of monarchs simply could not fulfill the office of "Supreme Head" or "Supreme Governor" that Henry and Elizabeth Tudor had designed.

And in the 18th century the monarchs of England lost interest in their ostensible "Supreme Headship".86 The Enlightenment, the intellectual groundswell away from Christianity amongst the elite, combined with the foreign perspectives that the Houses of Orange and Hanover brought with them to England, and inhibited any creative redefinition of the Church's identity in the 18th century. King-in-Parliament simply didn't want trouble from the Church of England. That is why they saw to it that the Church's Convocations met only once between 1717 and 1851. The Church's existence creaked along, but there was no platform, no point d'appui from which anyone could have mounted a revision of its identity and purpose, let alone its somnolent present existence. When matters came to a head in the 1820s, revision was painfully long overdue. Of course, the fiction of monarchial headship persisted, and still in some sense endures to this day.

65 Protestant

Throughout the manifold changes and chances of the Civil War, the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution, the 16th century formularies of the English Church remained wholly Protestant as the Reformers had intended (in the 1640s they were temporarily replaced by the even more Protestant documents of the ).

The "Elizabethan Settlement" in 1559 entailed a few concessions to a more catholic piety (May I use the term now without inverted commas?) that had mostly to do with Elizabeth's fine calculation of England's sensibilities at the time. The Book of Common Prayer specified in the Act of Uniformity was the 1552 Book, with four exceptions. Elizabeth omitted the prayer against the Papacy that pulled Rome's tail undiplomatically. She likewise omitted John Knox's “” that had sounded unnecessarily protestant in reference to the consecrated elements in the Lord's Supper. She inserted a wholly opaque that (as she would later interpret it) would force clergy to wear medieval vestments, reassuring their parishioners that nothing much had changed. And most famously, Elizabeth combined (oxymoronically) the words of administration from the 1549 and the 1552 eucharistic rites. Her intention was to allow the maximum number of her subjects to receive Holy Communion with a clear conscience. With these exceptions, the 1552 Book in all its arch- (including the Cranmerian Lord's Supper) remained the standard for the national Church. Symbolically the pre-Reformation altars continued to be forbidden, replaced with tables placed lengthwise in the chancel, to emphasize that the rite was a meal and not a sacrifice.87

The rest of Elizabeth's reign saw the Church maintaining this Protestant course. She had the 39 Articles affirmed by in 1563 and by Parliament in 1571. As we have seen, Elizabeth stifled the more ambitious designs of the Puritan movement in the Church of England. She would not permit Parliament to debate proposals for a Presbyterian polity, whose proponents favored a more active role in church government for the university-trained Puritan divines. Her champions and Richard Hooker ably defended episcopacy, not as iure divino or specifically required by Scripture, but as ancient and reasonable (according to Hooker's pre- Cartesian understanding of "reason" as the God-given faculty whereby we discern God's guidance in religious matters not specified by the Bible). Realizing that religious "absolutes" were inflaming the Wars of Religion in France, Elizabeth tried to keep their number to a minimum, within the broad protestant framework of the Articles and the Book of Common Prayer.88

The early Stuart period saw the Elizabethan mainstream begin to come apart. On the one hand, the Caroline Divines represented a tentative experimentation with a more catholic piety in the reign of Charles I, particularly in the 1630s. This small and loosely-connected group of theologians enjoyed a brief period of royal favor, abruptly terminated by the

66 outbreak of Civil War in 1642. They tended to emphasize that the Church of England was "catholic and reformed." They moved closer to a view of the episcopacy as the bene esse of the Church (that is to say, iure divino in a way that Elizabeth had never espoused) but without un- churching the Continental Protestants in a way that an esse view would have done. Bishop Launcelot Andrewes and Archbishop William Laud tried to encourage the use of beautiful artifacts in worship (like the silver that so infuriated the mainstream Anglican Puritans). Laud tried to have Elizabethan Communion tables moved out, and altars rebuilt at the east end. But Laud's identification with the monarchy meant that his influence collapsed with the outbreak of the War, and his Puritan enemies gratuitously cut off his head in 1645.89

The Cromwellian period saw the Church - many would say - wrecked on the protestant shore. The erstwhile Church of England took refuge with young Charles II on the Continent. On his restoration in 1660, there might have been a brief opportunity to sail the Church of England closer to the catholic shore. Certainly the Laudian bishops who returned with him wanted to resume their martyred leader's policy of selective re- catholicization. But the dominant lay gentry in Parliament dragged their feet. So the outcome of the (to debate religious issues) in 1662 was mixed. On the one hand, Puritan ministers who refused re-ordination were expelled from the Church. Episcopacy and episcopal ordination were emphatically preserved. Otherwise the protestant character of the formularies persisted. The Thirty-Nine Articles remained in force. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer (despite minor editorial revisions) was essentially the same as its predecessor in 1559. Two small rubrical changes moved the Eucharistic rite in a direction that 19th century Anglo-Catholic reformers would later applaud. The offertory now referred to "alms and oblations" instead of merely the former, and they were to be placed on the Holy Table and not dumped directly into the poor box. It might therefore be possible later to construe the word "oblations" to indicate the elements of bread and wine, though this inference was not required by the 1662 wording. And likewise the 1662 rite recovered the fraction, albeit quietly in the midst of the words of institution and not as a separate and highly visible action.90

With these tiny exceptions, the Restoration Church of England was still as formally Protestant as its 16th century predecessor had been. Of course, the spiritual and intellectual environment was changing radically, in the direction of the Enlightenment and a more secular worldview amongst the aristocracy who controlled the Church. But there was no mechanism for addressing these societal and intellectual changes coherently. In the absence of either royal leadership or leadership in Convocation, the revival movements of the 18th century (Methodist and Evangelical) would have no opportunity to address the Church of England institutionally as a whole. Laodicean torpor therefore characterized the Church of England when the Evangelical Revival broke out in 1735, and for nearly a century thereafter.

67 The Evangelical Revival

A young Oxford undergraduate named George Whitefield came to a renewed faith in Christ around Pentecost in 1735.91 Shortly thereafter, he returned to his native Gloucester for ordination to the diaconate, and he began preaching with such vigor that critics complained that he had driven several people mad. Within a few years, Whitefield had discovered a new venue for his homiletical gifts amongst the depressed coal miners in the Kingswood outside the city of . These starving people had no parish church, and so Whitefield burst the bonds of convention and started preaching to them in the fields.92 This startling venture helped incite a transatlantic spiritual revival over the next few decades, in which millions of people heard the Gospel preached in fields and marketplaces, outside church walls except when daring pastors invited them inside.93 Whitefield's former Oxford mentor John Wesley initially joined him in his extra-mural revivalist preaching, though subsequently Wesley veered off in a different direction, both theologically and ecclesiologically.

Whitefield's message and his methods initially evoked hostility from bishops and parish clergy in the Church of England. Slowly over the 1740s and 1750s a small group of Anglican clergy began to experience a renewed faith in Christ, and to preach this message from their pulpits. William Grimshaw of Haworth in Yorkshire was one such early revivalist, whose vigorous pastoral ministry transformed the somnolence of his moorland parish (he occasionally drove sleepy parishioners into church with a bull whip). In the 1780s the Evangelicals achieved a toehold in hostile London when ex-slaver John Newton was appointed to St. Mary, Woolnoth near the Bank of England.94

Partly through Newton's pastoral ministry, a number of socially prominent laypeople began to emerge as Evangelical leaders in the 1780s. William Wilberforce, MP was one; playwright and poet Hannah More was another. Both of them had conversion experiences that had been the mark of Evangelicals since the 1730s. Both of them felt called to work out their salvation in the world. In 1787 Wilberforce famously recorded in his journal that God had set before him two great causes, the suppression of the slave trade and the "reform of manners" (that is, reforming the violent, dissolute and bibulous state of English society in the 1780s). The former cause occupied much of Wilberforce's energies for the rest of his life, culminating in the complete abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833. In the course of this struggle he attracted many allies, Anglican laypeople like himself, whose renewed piety found expression in scores of campaigns for social reform. Numbers of Evangelical clergy likewise grew apace during this period.95 Charles Simeon of Cambridge mentored scores of future Anglican clergy, beginning in 1783 with his appointment to Holy Trinity parish and his fellowship at King's College.96 Henry Ryder of Gloucester was the first Evangelical elevated to the episcopal bench, in 1815. But the two great spheres of Evangelical activity were the heart of the individual believer, and the social

68 world of England in the early Industrial Revolution. Institutionally the Church of England was scarcely touched before the 1830s.

Ever since Whitefield's conversion in 1735, the "great change" in the life of the individual Christian had been the first preoccupation of the Evangelical Revival. Evangelicals assumed the theology of the 16th century formularies, in particular the authority of the Bible, the centrality of the Cross within the biblical story, and the requirement that a true Christian actually experience justification by grace through faith. But now these Reformation principles caught fire. Two new elements of Evangelical faith emerged in the 1730s, namely and activism.97

The historic Calvinism of the English Reformation acknowledged that God might bestow an assurance of salvation upon an elderly and faithful . But theologians of the 16th and 17th centuries believed that such a gift was rare, and that doubts would assail the pilgrim throughout this life. Beginning with the preaching of Whitefield and Wesley in the 1730s, a much wider incidence of assurance broke out amongst their converts. It seemed that God was allowing even very young believers to experience a confident sense of their salvation. (There seemed to be some connection between this experiential confidence and the empiricism of the Enlightenment, but that connection is too complicated to describe here).

Assurance of salvation led to activism in the world. The Methodist movement harnessed this energy immediately, and its "class" system of small groups began to effect transformation in the daily lives of its members. In the Anglican sector of the Evangelical revival, activism resulted in the transformation of society. Evangelical culture warrior Hannah More asserted, "Action is the life of virtue, and the world is the theatre of action."98 Wilberforce's allies ultimately founded hundreds of voluntary societies, addressing a myriad of social problems in early industrial society and in the nascent British Empire.

And of course the Evangelical revival led directly to the evangelization of the world in what historian Kenneth Scott Latourette called the "great century" of world evangelization.99 The Anglican Evangelicals' contribution to this wave of cross-cultural evangelism came through voluntary missionary societies like the CMS (founded in 1799) and not through the agency of the institutional Church.100 Just as the paralysis of the Church rendered it unable to respond to the Industrial Revolution, so likewise with the opening of the non-Western world to Christian evangelization. It was the voluntary societies that sent out the missionaries, not the institutional Church of England.

69 So successful were the voluntary societies that the Anglican Evangelicals founded, and so accustomed the latter were to this modus operandi, that when structural reform came to the Church in the 1830, the Evangelicals were not interested, as we shall see.101

The Evangelical Ecclesiology

In light of all the above, it is not hard to understand why the Evangelical Revival substituted the question "What is a true Christian?" for hitherto central question "What is a true Church?"102 This shift of emphasis had several implications for ecclesiology, though the revivalists did not address this topic systematically.

First of all, their emphasis on the individual's change of heart, and away from ecclesiastical structures and rites, implied that the "true Church" was the blessed company of all faithful people (invisible, known only to God) and not some empirical institution. While Cranmer had emphasized the visible Church of England in his 42 Articles, and ignored the question of the invisible Church, the revivalists implied the opposite. True Christianity was an inward matter of the heart.

This emphasis on inwardness implied an even stronger sense than hitherto that Church polity was "indifferent," an adiaphoron. The 16th century Reformers had all expressed this attitude toward the polity of the Tudor Church, based on their more fundamental commitment to divine right monarchy. But now there were multiple "denominations" in England, in all of which a person might experience "the Great Change." Indeed, a person listening to George Whitefield's preaching in a field might be converted without the ministry of any denomination at all. So the Evangelical Revival underscored the "indifferent" nature of Church polity for a new reason. The work of the Gospel in the individual heart was central. Assuming that the outward structures of the churches entailed nothing specifically contrary to the Word of God, the varying details of church polity amongst the different Christian traditions were secondary.103

This did not mean that the Anglican Evangelicals thought poorly of their Church. The early hostility that Whitefield expressed toward "unconverted" Anglican clergy later gave way to a more appreciative attitude toward the Church in the era of Newton and Simeon. However, the fact of pluralism (and the raised eyebrows of fellow revivalists in the dissenting churches) did mean that Anglican Evangelicals felt obliged to explain this continuing loyalty to the Church of England. They did so on various utilitarian grounds. Newton believed that the national Church ensured that at least a basic Christian faith was being commended in all parts of the country through the Book of Common Prayer.104 Likewise Charles Simeon valued the opportunity that the parish system afforded converted clergy to preach the Gospel

70 for conversion.105 William Wilberforce for his part thought that the antiquity and ubiquity of the established Church were strong bulwarks against the revolutionary radicalism of France after 1789.106(Indeed, though Wilberforce was too polite to say so, the frozen immobility of the Church might be seen as a positive advantage in this regard). Likewise Wilberforce believed that the Church's Reformation formularies expressed the essence of biblical Christianity, and simply needed the Spirit's breath to commend them to his countrymen's hearts. So the Anglican revivalists could adduce practical reasons for their fidelity to the Church, in a confident bene esse fashion.

There were certainly a number of practical benefits that the Evangelical Revival brought to the Church of England in return. Chief amongst these was the transformation of the role of the parish clergyman. In the 18th century the incumbents had been gentlemen whose chief duty was to conduct . The popular image of the fox-hunting, port-swilling vicar was not far off the mark. By 1833 amongst Evangelical clergy the parish ministry had been radically redefined. A contemporary manual for clergy said that:

To acquaint ourselves with the various wants of our people; to win their affections; to give a seasonable warning, encouragement, instruction, or consolidation; to identify ourselves with their spiritual interests, in the temper of Christian sympathy, and under a sense of Ministerial obligation; to do this with the constancy, seriousness, and fervid energy which the matter requires, is indeed a work of industry, patience and self-denial.107

This same spirit of activism drove many idealistic young clergy out of England and onto the mission field in the early 19th century. In time this evangelistic imperative would create the worldwide Anglican Communion, which (together with the collapse of the old Tudor national/monarchial model of ecclesiology) would demand a new understanding of Anglicanism - as we shall see in the following section of this paper.

In the meantime, what about the Church's sacraments? Anglican Evangelicals regarded the Eucharist with warmth and gratitude, both as a "converting ordinance" and as a means of sanctifying grace. The Eucharist was central to Charles Simeon's conversion. After a dark night of the soul during Lent in 1779,

on the Sunday morning, Easter Day, April 4th, I awoke early with those words upon my heart and lips, "Jesus Christ is risen today! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! From that hour peace flowed in rich abundance into my soul, and at the Lord's Table in our Chapel I had the sweetest access to God through my blessed Saviour.108

God's Word had already broken into Simeon's life that morning, but the Eucharist sealed and confirmed the divine promises to his heart. For the Anglican Evangelicals the objective

71 presence of Christ in the sacrament was not the main point, but rather that the promises of God in Holy Scripture found reinforcement in the entire rite.

Their point was not that something different is given in the Eucharist but that the same thing, or rather the same One, is given in special degree by the functional force of the Sacrament.109

Nevertheless, the crucial element in the Christian life remained the inward, subjective and individual experience of conversion, the "Great Change," and not the outward performance of the Lord's Supper.

The sacrament of Baptism unfortunately became a more contentious matter for Anglican Evangelicals than the Eucharist. The centrality of the conversion experience - the importance that one could testify to a sense of assurance - meant that posed problems. Famously Cranmer's rite in the 1552 and subsequent Prayer Books had contained the words,

Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this child is regenerate and grafted into the body of 110 Christ’s (sic) Church...

Evangelicals found various ways - such as the principle of charitable anticipation - to explain away the suggestion of any ex opere operato , in advance of conversion. These strategies worked more or less, in the period before 1833. But later on when Anglo-Catholics began to insist on the literal interpretation of Cranmer's language, and when the Gorham Judgment supported a contrary Evangelical view, Baptism would become a great bone of contention between the two emergent parties.111

In any case, the crucial matter for Anglican Evangelicals was not the Church's faithful performance of the sacraments, but the alteration in the individual's heart that came with conversion. This emphasis on individual inwardness and subjectivity, together with the principle of voluntary choice of church adherence in a pluralistic society, both helped render the old Tudor model of the Church defunct. Bruce Hindmarsh's comment about John Newton applies to the Evangelical revivalists in general.

That he rejected the ideal of a confessional state and a monopolistic national church - the two sides of the traditional Anglican Church-State constitution - was at the same time both a simple recognition of the contemporary reality and an act of theological commitment. For, by basing his defense of religious establishments upon their instrumental value, he was acknowledging the de facto status of the Church of England as a voluntary, if privileged, society which people would choose to join, or not, as a matter of private judgment. But he

72 also knew that his primary theological concern with true belief over nominal profession would not in any case be advanced by State-coerced, religious uniformity.112

So the availability of existential assurance, a fresh optimism about the transforming power of the Word of God, and the activist mood that characterized the Evangelical Revival, all combined to destroy the national and monarchial features of the Tudor paradigm (which had been weakened progressively since the ). In the years that followed the apogee of Evangelical influence in the 1830s, the movement would struggle to conceive a new definition of Anglicanism, as we shall see.

Evangelicals in the American Episcopal Church

Before we leave the Evangelical Revival, we should say a few words about the Evangelical movement in the American Episcopal Church. This tradition took shape in the 1810s and did not survive the 1870s, so it had little effect on the worldwide Anglican Evangelical strand, whose epicenter and missionary base were the British Isles. However, a few words are appropriate.

George Whitefield famously made thirteen trips across the Atlantic to preach the Gospel in the American colonies, and he died in Newburyport, MA in 1770. He generally met a hostile response from Church of England clergy in the colonies, for the predictable reasons (his rejection of , his alliance with Congregationalist and Presbyterian revivalists, and so on).113A few Episcopal clergy caught Whitefield's spirit in the latter 18th century, like Devereaux Jarrett in Virginia.114 But the real birth of the Evangelical movement in the American Episcopal Church had to wait until the early 19th century.

In 1811 the Rev. Alexander Viets Griswold was consecrated Bishop of the newly formed Eastern Diocese (including all of New England save Connecticut). Griswold experienced an evangelical conversion on the occasion of his consecration to the episcopate, and he began a whirlwind ministry. In his first eighteen years as bishop, he traveled 20,000 miles, confirmed nearly 10,000 persons, and ordained 148 deacons and 111 presbyters. Though similar Evangelical awakenings occurred in such dioceses as Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, Griswold is generally accepted as the first-generation pioneer of the movement.115

73 Griswold's successor as Evangelical leader was the Rt. Rev. Charles Pettit McIlvaine, bishop of Ohio from 1832 to 1873. McIlvaine guided the movement through the stormy years that followed the rise of Anglo-Catholicism in the early 1840s.116 Previously the Old High Church movement, led by Bishop John Henry Hobart of New York, had differed substantially from the Evangelicals on matters of ecclesiology and sacramental theology. But the liturgical styles of the two parties had remained much the same, and a common seminary syllabus (compiled by Presiding Bishop William White in 1804) gave the two emerging groups a common theological vocabulary and delayed the acrimony that erupted in the 1840s.117

Anglo-Catholic ideas entered the American Episcopal bloodstream through General Seminary in New York, and quickly spread through the Church. Young Anglo-Catholic clergy began to insist (for example) on the literal meaning of the word "regenerate" in the service of Holy Baptism, and began to demand that Evangelical clergy be forced to confess that interpretation. Likewise the use of Anglo-Catholic vestments, ceremonial and decoration delighted some parishes and infuriated others. General Convention seemed incapable of dealing with the situation to the satisfaction of either party in the 1840s and 1850s. The Civil War briefly interrupted these wars of religion (with the secession of the Confederate dioceses) but by 1868 the erstwhile secessionists had been welcomed back to General Convention and the battle resumed.118

In 1873 an Episcopal bishop (George Cummins of Kentucky) led a few clergy and laypeople out of the Episcopal Church. They formed the Reformed Episcopal Church, in order to protect the heritage and convictions of the Anglican Evangelical tradition.119 This secession did not by itself cause the dwindling of the Episcopal Evangelical movement that ensued in the following years. More important was the passing of the older order, the death of leaders like Charles Pettit McIlvaine (obit 1873) and their failure - in retrospect - to raise up a new generation of leaders who could give a reasoned defense not only of Evangelicalism, but of Christianity as a whole. As waves of modernism washed across the Atlantic (German Biblical criticism, Darwinism and the like) younger Episcopalian leaders like Phillips Brooks were more drawn to German liberal theology than back to the pre-critical Episcopal Evangelical revivalism that seemed ossified in the 1820s.120

While the Episcopal Evangelical movement endured in the 19th century, its leaders tried to work out an ecclesiological position over against Old High , now set on fire by the Oxford and Cambridge movements. Bishop Hobart had been very clear in the 1820s that the Episcopal Church (as having Apostolic Succession but lacking the errors of Rome) was the only valid Christian body in America. People who had access to its episcopally- ordained ministry, and declined that opportunity, placed themselves ominously in the sphere of "God's uncovenanted mercies."121 The service of Holy Baptism fully incorporated people into the Church, but regular participation in worship would gradually

74 sanctify them over a faithful lifetime. No Whitefield-esque revolutionary conversion experience was necessary, or indeed desirable. On the whole, Anglo-Catholics would affirm Hobart's vision of the Episcopal Church as the Ark of Salvation, floating serene above the turbulent waters of American Protestant revivalism.122

The Evangelicals believed that the Episcopal Church was indeed the best option amongst the proliferating Protestant denominations in 19th century America. It was overall the most faithful to New Testament Christianity. But other American churches also preached the heart of the matter, which was the conversion of individual hearts to Jesus Christ. Episcopal Evangelicals could happily affirm those ministries (however undignified their occasional behavior might be) and gladly cooperate with them in urban revivals and philanthropic voluntary societies. In this pluralistic religious environment, Episcopal Evangelicals needed to stress - perhaps more than their British allies - the distinction between the invisible and the visible churches. The former included all persons (of whatever denomination) who had given their lives to Jesus. The latter (in their various manifestations) were a mixed bag, as many of their members had resisted "the Great Change" and remained in their sins. Revolutionary conversion alone (not infant baptism) made a true Christian. Sanctification should proceed immediately from "the Great Change" and not be the gradual, cumulative effect of dutiful worship.123

This was about as far as Episcopal Evangelical ecclesiology developed in the sixty- odd years of the movement's active life. The tradition waned and gradually disappeared in the American Episcopal Church, not to be revived on these shores until the foundation of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in the 1970s. Thereby hangs another tale.

Summary

Although the Evangelical revivalists did not address ecclesiology focally, or as a matter of great interest, we may infer certain attitudes from their activities and their writing.

(1) In place of the historic preoccupation with the nature of a true Church, the Anglican Evangelical revivalists asked, "What is a true Christian?" Since true religion was an inward matter of the heart, the "true Church" must therefore be invisible and known only to God.

(2) While they valued the Church of England on utilitarian and bene esse grounds, they therefore tacitly abandoned the Tudor model of a single "true" national Church under a divine-right monarch.

75 (3) Therefore they continued to view ecclesiastical polity as an adiaphoron, much more so since now in a pluralistic religious marketplace, the all-important conversion experience was available elsewhere than the Church of England. Significantly, they did not take great interest in the reforms undertaken by the Ecclesiastical Commission in the 1830s - again, since true religion was a matter of the heart.

(4) Faithful preaching of the Word and right administration of the sacraments continued to be the marks of a true "denomination," as Article 19 had specified in a bygone environment. But now that the issue of conversion vs. non-conversion had taken central place, and the "true Church" was the invisible company of the converted, the issue of faithful doctrine and right worship in the visible Church had receded.

(5) Individual experience of conversion, even more than the tradition of orthodox teaching, represented the true Apostolic Succession.

(6) The clergy still continued to be ministers of Word and sacrament as the 16th century formularies had defined them, with increased emphasis now on preaching and teaching.

(7) The sacraments had diminished in importance. Evangelical revivalists all appreciated the Eucharist for its impact on the heart of the believer. Infant Baptism had become a problem as the experience of conversion now defined the true Christian.

76 Anglican Evangelicals in the Modern World

Decline and Revival (1833-2016)

From the late 1820s onwards, Anglican Evangelicals faced seismic changes in English society and in the Church of England as well. These changes associated with modernization completely altered the rural environment of village churches (with a few large cities like London) in which the Evangelical Revival had flourished during the previous century. For a generation or so, Anglican Evangelicals continued to enjoy some success. Numbers of Evangelical clergy continued to increase, in the 1850s the Evangelicals saw seven of their fellows raised to the episcopate, and the Evangelicals in Parliament continued to win victories in domestic social reform, now that the victory against slavery had been won. And Evangelical missions overseas slowly gained traction (the one field in which Anglican Evangelicals would continue to enjoy success down to the First World War).

But after a generation in which Anglican Evangelicals had seen their old methods and attitudes continue to pay dividends, ultimately the changes associated with Modernity caught up with them. Noticeably from the 1860s onwards, the Evangelicals failed to respond creatively to the new intellectual and social environment. They were being assailed by changes in three dimensions, which began to force them onto the defensive in the mid-19th century.

First of all there were deep changes in English society, which the Evangelicals' old attitudes and methods proved inadequate to address. The Industrial Revolution (long gathering force) reshaped the English landscape in the early 19th century. The new factories swept English peasants out of their ancestral villages, into the "dark satanic mills" and the hideous urban ghettoes where the workers and their families cowered. A tidal wave of Irish immigrants in the Potato Famine years swelled the new cities with Roman Catholics, rekindling the centuries-old English paranoia about Roman "aggression." The Church of England was still painfully reforming its creaking institutional life, and quite incapable of addressing the spiritual needs of the urban population, whether technically Anglican or defiantly Irish Roman Catholic. By the 1870s the Anglican Evangelicals found it increasingly difficult to maintain their leadership. Socially conservative, they found that their erstwhile "top down" strategies of reform (e.g. Hannah More's edifying "penny tracts") proved less and less viable as the century wore on - despite heroic efforts by Parliamentary leaders like the Earl of Shaftesbury. Socialist ideas and strategies overtook and gradually pushed out the older Evangelical ideals of gradual reform within a hierarchical society. At the beginning of the 19th century, Anglican Evangelicals like William Wilberforce had supplied the political and social leadership that would effect the abolition of slavery. By 1900, the newly-formed Labour Party had taken the lead in social reform, with no reference to Evangelical Christianity in its platform.

77 Secondly there were deep changes in the Western worldview, which left the Evangelicals stranded in an earlier mental age. They had made their peace with the Newtonian world via the work scholars like of Archdeacon William Paley, whose Evidences of Christianity (1794) had used the metaphor of the watchmaker to argue for the intelligent design of a static universe. But in the next generation, developments in geology began to challenge the Evangelicals' confidence that God had created the universe all at once in 4004 BC, in the six days described in Genesis 1. Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1830) Charles began to suggest a much longer chronology, millions of years rather than thousands. Darwin’s Origen of Species (1859) capped this train of thought. Perhaps a literal reading of Genesis 1 could no longer be sustained. Instead of interacting thoughtfully with this idea, Anglican Evangelicals would shut their eyes and clench their teeth.

The new currents of biblical criticism from Germany posed a similar intellectual threat. German scholars like D. F. Strauss assumed a closed-system universe and treated the Bible like any other ancient human document. Mary Anne Evans (aka George Eliot) translated Strauss’s Leben Jesu into English in 1846. Strauss viewed the Resurrection as a pious fiction. When scholarly Anglicans felt compelled to interact with German higher criticism in Essays and Reviews (1860), Evangelicals reacted with horror and condemnation. But the ground was shifting beneath their feet, and (to mix the metaphor) they circled their wagons. The Evangelicals' failure to think about science and biblical criticism cost them the leadership they briefly enjoyed in the Church of England at mid-century, and helped incite their retreat into their parishes by 1900.

A third reason for the 19th century Evangelicals' loss of leadership in Church and society was the long battle with Anglo-Catholicism. The latter was a complicated movement of revival and nostalgia, a more successful response to the ugliness of industrialized England than the Evangelicals were able to mount. In their revival of medieval ceremonial, the Ritualists were legally in the wrong, and much of their program could not be squared with the Thirty-Nine Articles. But they would not give up; they were willing to go to jail for their convictions, and in the long run the Evangelicals' recourse to legal persecution looked petty and spiteful. The Evangelicals' Church Association (formed in 1865) led the battle against Ritualism in the courts, but it also split the Evangelical party. By no means all the Evangelical clergy approved of its tactics, its vehemence or its negativity. And of course educated British society (while not really approving of Anglo-Catholicism) began to think that the Evangelicals were fighting a battle about which nobody else cared much any longer.

On the other hand, Evangelical missionary societies had planted Anglican Christianity all over the globe, an achievement that would be decisive in the early 21st century, as we shall see.

78

It is possible to describe the Evangelicals' varying fortunes in terms of four periods from 1833 to the present.

1833-1870

The famous Religious Census of Britain in 1851 showed that some 21% of the population in England and were attending Anglican churches on that Sunday in March.124Certain Evangelical parishes were doing better, attracting 44% of their ambient population, more than twice the rate for Church of England parishes as a whole.125

This was a period at which Evangelical clergy were reckoned to number about a third of all clergy in the Church.126 These mid-Victorian numbers marked the high tide of Evangelical strength and influence in the Church of England. Even Cardinal Newman acknowledged that as late as the 1860s, the Evangelicals were still the strongest movement in the Church.127The 1850s also showed Evangelical preferment in the episcopate as well. Prime Minister Lord Palmerston delegated the selection of bishops to his friend the Earl of Shaftesbury in 1855. Of the nineteen bishops appointed in the next decade, seven were Evangelicals, including C. T. Longley who served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1862 (succeeding another Evangelical, , Canterbury 1848-1862).128

This period also saw the energetic growth of the Evangelical mission societies, at home and abroad, typified by the famous "Six Societies" that were the flagships of the movement.129At the end of the period, in 1858-1863, a series of events (such as the foundation of the British Raj in ) marked an acceleration of Western missions overseas, and helped swell the tide of what K. S. Latourette would call "the Great Century" of world evangelization.130Anglican Evangelical societies helped lay the foundations for this period of advance.131 In the long run this achievement would count for much more than did the brief Evangelical cultural hegemony that they enjoyed in early Victorian Britain.

Despite the notoriety of their sober piety, Evangelicals in Britain enjoyed a measure of popularity at mid-century. The restoration of the Roman in England in 1850 (viewed by most of the country as "Papal Aggression") gave the Evangelicals a boost, representing as they did the party of the Reformation in its purest form. The famous Gorham judgment the same year gave legal support to Evangelical clergy who opposed the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, a key plank in the emerging Anglo-Catholic platform. The foundation of the first explicitly Ritualist church (St. Barnabas, Pimlico in 1850) was a straw in what would become a tempest of later Anglo-Catholic challenges, but at mid- century that was mostly in the future. Though Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics were

79 beginning to signal their differences by adopting distinctive clerical dress132 but again, these were early days.

In Parliament, the Evangelical party continued to wield powerful influence. Thomas Fowell Buxton MP died in 1845; he had been Wilberforce's immediate successor, and the architect of the abolition of slavery in 1833. But Buxton was succeeded by Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, later the Earl of Shaftesbury, who ably directed Parliamentary social reform in his place. In 1842 Shaftesbury carried a bill that forbade the use of women and boys under ten in the coal mines. Five years later he was able to pass legislation limiting the work-day for men in the factories to ten hours. Shaftesbury and his allies promoted dozens of similar bills, designed to mitigate the horrors of the "dark satanic mills." Shaftesbury's social legislation was conservative and arguably paternalistic; he envisaged no change to England's hierarchical society, and he cared as much for the workers' souls as he did for their bodies. Later in the century, secular socialist motives would supersede Evangelical philanthropy. But at mid-century this was all in the future.133

To be sure, the erosive effects of science and Biblical criticism were growing. In the early 1850s Matthew Arnold was lamenting the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" as the Christian "sea of faith" receded from credibility.134And Alfred, Lord Tennyson was contemplating the spectre of a Nature "red in tooth and claw with ravine" instead of the perfectly beautiful Newtonian clock that Archdeacon Paley had taught the Evangelicals to admire.135 Before the 1860s, however, Evangelicals had taken little offense at the new developments in geology and biology.136 Nor had the anti-supernaturalism of German higher criticism really come to their attention. But in 1859 Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species. And the following year a group of Anglican theological writers, in a slim volume entitled Essays and Reviews, suggested that German scholarship deserved a closer look. Evangelical responses in both these fields were shrill and negative, but contained nothing much of substance. By 1870 the Evangelical era of influence in Victorian England was on the wane, as we shall see.

1870-1914

D.W. Bebbington remarks that the "prominence of Evangelicals in society shortly after the middle of the nineteenth century was never again to be repeated."137 They did continue to hold almost half of English parishes at the outbreak of World War I.138 And six of their number were appointed to the episcopate during that period,139 including such distinguished men as J.C. Ryle of Liverpool and of Durham.140 But Evangelical numbers on the bench were far exceeded by moderate Anglo-Catholics and the rising Liberals. Likewise the new Evangelical theological colleges at Oxford and Cambridge

80 (Wycliffe Hall in 1877 and Ridley Hall in 1872) were insufficient to stem the tide of Anglo- Catholic and Modernist gains overall during that same period.

To be sure, this period marked an enormous advance in global evangelization. And the Evangelical societies continued to do heroic work in planting churches throughout the British Empire.141 Their inspiring stories of vision and sacrifice are too long to enumerate here.142 Though their work was hampered by their association with the British flag and the merchant's barrel, and by their deep paternalism, nevertheless by the end of the period Anglican Evangelical missions could produce a classic of both piety and sanctified strategy in Roland Allen’s Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or Ours? (1912). While Anglican Evangelicals diminished at home in the late 19th century, they planted the seeds of the robust Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans that leads world Anglicanism in the early 21st century.

Back home in Britain, the picture was not so bright. The Evangelicals' struggle with Ritualism was becoming increasingly shrill. The "Cambridge Movement" under Neale had adapted the theology of the Tractarians (their sister movement at the other university) in the direction of reviving the architectural and ceremonial program of the 13th century.143Gothic architecture and medieval decoration gained popularity from romantic nostalgia in industrial England, as many people yearned for an imagined "Merrie England" of the Robin Hood legends or the Waverley novels of Sir Walter Scott. The Cambridge Camden Society and its journal the Ecclesiologist (1841-1868) promoted the Ritualist program, and the journal was able to cease publication after twenty-seven years, confident that its aims had been largely achieved.144 By this time the Evangelicals had been fully aroused to do battle. When the Ritualists founded the English Church Union in 1859 to lead their struggle in the courts, the Evangelicals responded with the Church Association in 1865. The litigation that followed - right down to World War I - tended to make martyrs of the Ritualists, and to make Evangelicals look like reincarnations of Oliver Cromwell. Their prosecution in 1889 of the saintly Edward King, , was an unmitigated disaster. It not only darkened the Evangelicals' repute in popular estimation, but it split the Evangelical party as well. Even Bishop Ryle took a conciliatory posture, as over against his more "bolshie" fellow Protestants.145 The Church as a whole recognized that the Ritualist innovations constituted a disorder, and appointed a Royal Commission in 1904 to try and bring some order out of the liturgical chaos in the Church. But official recognition of the problem did nothing to rescue the Evangelicals' reputation as inquisitors. From a position of some strength and influence at mid-century, the Evangelicals' preoccupation with Ritualist-bashing had cost them dearly by the outbreak of World War I.

In Parliament, the late 19th century saw the gradual eclipse of Evangelical leadership in social reform. The Evangelicals - from Wilberforce to Shaftesbury - had hoped to transform society by saving the individual sinner. They were focally concerned with the value of every individual soul. They did not intend to upset the social hierarchy, but to bind

81 the rich and poor together by bonds of love. They were pragmatists, rather than comprehensive theorists. Their voluntary societies were committed to righting specific wrongs, on principles of Christian charity. But the Evangelicals did insist that the government intervene when private philanthropy proved insufficient. And as society grew increasingly complex, as industrialization and urbanization grew apace in the later 19th century, government intervention became more and more necessary. And the Evangelicals saw their leadership increasingly supplanted by socialists who did intend to restructure British society, on scientific rather than religious principles. Government bureaucracy began to supplant private voluntary societies. Shaftesbury's funeral in 1885 marked the end of an era. Five hundred voluntary societies marched in his train, carrying their banners. But the future lay with a more faceless bureaucracy.146

Finally in the intellectual realm the Evangelicals' capitulation was most extreme. A combination of Romantic subjectivism, Hegelian progressivism and the pantheism of F.D. E. Schleiermacher transformed the European theological universe in the late 19th century. God was a wholly immanent and impersonal force. Jesus was a Spirit-filled Galilean prophet. The resurrection was impossible to credit. Indeed, any suggestion of a transcendent supernaturalism was out of the question. It was not impossible to analyze and critique this new religion. The Congregationalist theologian P.T. Forsyth managed it brilliantly. But the Anglican Evangelicals withdrew from the battle. Any response they offered remained at the level of popular polemic. And all too often their attention wavered, and they turned again to attacking the Anglo-Catholics. And so they forfeited any possibility of intellectual leadership in the Church. B.M.G. Reardon's summary is hostile but not unfair:

The Evangelical Party had never been noted for its interest in or concern for theological learning or the relations between Christian thought and contemporary science and scholarship. On the contrary, its aims were strictly practical and the religious atmosphere it tended to create (and certainly found congenial) was predominantly emotional. Intellectual curiosity in religious matters is eschewed as misleading and purposeless. An old-fashioned orthodoxy, centred on the doctrine of the atonement as a penal substitutionary sacrifice, was all, theologically speaking, that it had to offer. This included a largely Old Testament theism, a naive supernaturalism, a literalist view of the Bible and an eschatology which admitted heaven and hell but not purgatory. The evangelical idea of salvation was still prevailingly individualist. Such attitudes would not yield readily to new influences from out side the traditional religious sphere.147

A century later Anglican Evangelicals would find convincing ways to commend the historic Faith intelligently against its Modernist distortion. But in the period before World War I, they lowered the portcullis and raised the drawbridge.

82 1914 – 1967

The war years and their immediate aftermath saw Anglican Evangelicals still embattled and defensive, though with an hopeful up-tick at the end. For the most part, Randle Manwaring’s chapter titles for the inter-War period sum up the matter, as for example "The Defensive Years" and "Continuing Nadir "148 J.I. Packer later characterized Evangelicals in the 1930s and 1940s as "bumping along the bottom. " The Evangelicals remained fortified in their parishes. They were not represented at the higher levels of the Church.

The chief battle with Anglo-Catholicism came over the matter of Prayer Book revision in 1927-1928. A Royal Commission had tried to address the liturgical anarchy in the Church by offering a new Book with substantial concessions to the Anglo-Catholics. The proposed Book passed by large majorities in all three houses of the new Church Assembly. Evangelical clergy were unable to mount a convincing defense of the Reformation. But the Book still needed Parliamentary approval. Two distinguished Evangelical laymen (Sir William Joynson-Hicks and Sir Thomas Inskip) rallied the latent Anti-Roman sentiment in the House of Commons, and defeated the Book there in two successive years, 1927 and 1928. It was a disaster for the Church, and no great victory for the Anglican Evangelicals. The debacle pointed up the jury- rigged ecclesiastical situation. On the one hand, a Church Assembly (since 1920) intended to give "freedom to the Church," and on the other hand, it did no such thing.150 Parliament still had the last word. And the Evangelicals clergy - despite their position on the political sidelines - once again looked negative and obstructive. This might have been an apt moment for Evangelicals to rethink their ecclesiology, with its narrow focus on the individual and the parish (with a vague reference to the invisible fellowship of converted Christians everywhere). They ignored the opportunity.

In the theological battle with Modernism, Church of England Evangelicals lost members both to the left and to the right. On the left, a group of Evangelical clergy began meeting secretly in 1907 to discuss how Evangelical theology might make some adjustment to Modernism. The group announced its existence formally in 1923 as the “Anglican Evangelical Group Movement.” On the right, Evangelical strength suffered the defection of a conservative faction within the Church Missionary Society, who seceded from that flagship institution in 1922 and formed the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society. The issues were the absolute authority of Scripture, and the centrality of Christ's substitutionary atonement in the Christian Story. The conservatives had thought the CMS was wobbling, as it tried to maintain its ties to supporting parishes on both left and right. The schism simply pointed up the Evangelical movement's failure as a whole to mount a convincing defense of Biblical Christianity, in terms that would take account of Modernism, point up its weaknesses, and offer a comprehensive re-statement of the Faith in modern language.151

83 The same weakness in Evangelical thought became obvious in its silence regarding the pressing social issues of the 1920s and 1930s. The Labour Party and the Christian Socialist movement were asking pointed questions about Britain's class structure and its troubled economic life. In 1924 Anglican Churchmen participated in a "Conference on Christian Politics, Economics and Citizenship" (known as COPEC) in Birmingham, which under the rising leadership of began to shape a critique of modern capitalism. The Evangelicals were absent, and they were silent. Modernist Anglo-Catholics had developed a coherent social ethic, based on Christ's incarnation and its extension as the Kingdom of God. Evangelicals were unable to mount an alternative vision of society based on Christ's substitutionary atonement. Their strength continued to lie in the adaptation of this truth to the inner lives of individuals. They had nothing to say about "dark satanic mills" or toxic tenements.152

Toward the end of this "nadir" period, however, certain sparks were kindling a fire in the ashes, and would enliven Evangelical minds and hearts in the 1960s. One hopeful development in the 1930s could be seen in youth movements like the Children's Special Service Mission, including the famous "Bash Camps" in the 1930s headed by the Rev. E. H. J. Nash, which formed future Evangelical leaders like Michael Green, Dick Lucas, and John Stott.153Another hopeful sign was the emergence of Anglican intellectuals like C. S. Lewis and Dorothy Sayers, who (though by no means identified with the Evangelical party) showed that classical Christianity made better sense than its Modernist distortion. The rise of and the gathering storm of World War II convinced even Archbishop William Temple - hitherto a Hegelian of the Hegelians - that an immanentist, developmental, optimistic worldview had nothing to say to the radical evil now embodied in Adolf Hitler.154 This new interest in biblical Christianity persisted after World War II. C.S. Lewis appeared on the cover of Time magazine in America. And surprisingly, out of America came the astonishing Billy Graham in England in 1954 and after, which won thousands to a fresh expression of Evangelical Christianity.

On the opposite side of the world, a bastion of Anglican Evangelical conviction had for many years been growing. Sydney Archdiocese in Australia had its roots in (and some of its early leadership from) the Evangelical movement in the Church of England, but by the late 20th century had developed its own leadership and character. When the Global South awoke to its responsibilities to the Gospel (given the apostasy of the American and Canadian churches) Sydney Archdiocese would make a major contribution to the nascent reform of the Anglican Communion.155

All of these hopeful signs would find expression in a renewed Anglican Evangelicalism in the late 1960s.

84 1967 to the Present

In 1967 a landmark National Evangelical Anglican Conference (NEAC) met at the University of Keele, with more than a thousand delegates. The Rev. John Stott chaired the conference, and urged Anglican Evangelicals to come out of their ghettos and engage with the Church and with the world. The response was generally positive. Anglican Evangelicals responded to the challenge with energy and creativity, one sign of which was a second NEAC conference at Nottingham in 1977, with twice as many delegates as the first.156

However, at the same time there were seismic changes taking place in British culture all around them. First of all, a decisive shift away from Christianity began to occur in government, in the media, in the universities, and in the language of social discourse. The Christian Story ceased to be the basic plausibility structure for the British middle and upper classes (it had ceased to be so for the working classes even before the Industrial Revolution). The sexual revolution in the 1960s likewise entailed a re-paganization of British morals, especially in the under-thirty generation. All this meant that if Evangelicals were to re-engage the culture around them, they would face a culture that was far more hostile than (say) the Evangelicals had encountered a century earlier. 157

Secondly, accompanying this cultural change, habits of church-going began to drop precipitously from the 1960s onwards. Adrian Hastings describes the tipping point.

It should, first of all, be repeated that - all in all - there had been no very sharp statistical alteration in the religious practice of England between 1890 and 1960... the Anglican decline was pretty steady but seldom appeared calamitous...Moreover the very real fall of the inter-war years had been somewhat reassuringly, if really only rather slightly, reversed in the 1950s, so that there was no expectation of the sort of sudden statistical collapse which was now to take place.158

By all kinds of indices (baptisms, confirmations, ordinations, etc.) the Church of England would be effectively halved by 1985. Hastings concludes,

It is not exaggerated to conclude that between 1960 and 1985 the Church of England as a going concern was effectively reduced to not much more than half its previous size.159

The contraction continued into the 21st century. By 2011 the average Sunday attendance in Anglican parishes had shrunk to 898,000 in England and an astonishing 42,303 in Wales. Of a combined population of 56 million for England and Wales, this amounted to about 1.7% (contrast the figure of 21% one hundred and sixty years earlier, in 1851).160 To be sure,

85 as Grace Davie observes, a substantial "Anglican penumbra" continued to exist in Britain161composed of people who would turn to the Church of England for baptisms, marriages and funerals and who would like to have the Church around for comfort in national emergencies.162 But the prevailing religious picture in Britain featured "believing without belonging," in Grace Davie's famous phrase, where "believing" entailed the exuberant proliferation of romantic subjectivism and pagan individualism.163 So this was the environment in which Anglican Evangelicals began to re-engage with the Church and the world: cultural de-Christianization and institutional decline.

Evangelical Anglicans in Britain did respond to this changed environment with energy and creativity. In the academic realm, they exhibited an eagerness to engage with the various disciplines, using the tools of critical scholarship to elucidate and defend the Christian Story. N.T. Wright in , Anthony Thisleton in Hermeneutics, Colin Buchanan and Roger Beckwith in Liturgics, and Alister McGrath in and Apologetics - these were merely the most well known amongst a new generation of Anglican Evangelicals who left behind the obscurantism of their earlier tradition. This renaissance of Christian scholarship needed to proclaim the Faith against a new cacophony of pagan voices in the culture. But it was wholly engaged.

After Keele the Anglican Evangelicals also took seriously their engagement with the Church of England. Having so long focused their attention on the individual Christian, on the parish and on the invisible fellowship of converted believers (incarnated for a week every year at Keswick) Evangelicals began to serve on Church committees and to speak up in General Assembly.164 This re-engagement with the Church did mean that they had to concede space at the table to the Anglo-Catholics. By no means surrendering their Reformation theology, Evangelicals nevertheless ceased to define themselves over against Anglo-Catholicism. And they certainly ceased to think of opposition to Ritualism as their chief raison d'etre.

Re-engaging with the Church of England did mean that different Evangelicals had different ideas about what that process should entail. Coming out of their embattled ghetto meant that the Evangelicals lost their old unified identity, based on resistance to Ritualism. What attitude should Evangelicals adopt, for instance, toward the in the 1960s? The most prominent early Charismatic leader Michael Harper resigned his curacy at All Souls' Langham Place because of John Stott's doubts about the charismata. In 1976 representative Anglican Evangelicals and Charismatics signed a joint statement (Gospel and Spirit) that reduced the tension between them. But the Charismatic movement did mean that the definition of Evangelicalism became a bit blurred in that direction, that the boundary between the two movements became a bit opaque. One needed to ask, "Are you a charismatic Evangelical?"165

86 In another direction, Anglican Evangelicalism actually fragmented. In 1993, the Church of England began preparing legislation to allow the ordination of women to the presbyterate. If Evangelicals were to engage with the Church, sit on its committees and vote in Church Assembly, what position should they take vis-a-vis women's ordination? One response was clear: the answer was No. The "Reform" movement - as one brand of Anglican Evangelicalism - took shape over this issue in 1993. It tended to emphasize Calvinist theology and it asserted the need to defend the Reformation. But the timing seemed to indicate that the principal issue was the ordination of women. Reform's opposition was not based (obviously) on any Anglo-Catholic commitment to an apostolic succession of males, but rather on Biblical texts that had to do with "headship" and authority. Other Evangelicals read those texts differently. So one needed to ask, "Are you a Reform Evangelical?"166

Evangelicals who favored a more appreciative engagement with culture often adopted the phrase "open Evangelical." The website of Ridley Hall, Cambridge (a distinguished Evangelical theological college) features that phrase on its home page in the summer of 2015. Different "open Evangelicals" have different views on which issues to be "open" about, and what being "open" means in practical terms. Still, the question is often asked, "Are you an open Evangelical?"167

Of course, Anglican Evangelicals became even more varied in their opinions in the 1990s with the rise to prominence of the Global South in the Anglican Communion. The huge size of provinces like Nigeria would have increased their gravitas in the Communion eventually, but the issue of sexuality did hasten it. This was particularly the case because conservatives in the American Episcopal Church actively sought allies in the Global South, providing them with information about Modernist sexual ethics and about what was really going on in the sexually liberal Western provinces of the Communion. In return, various provinces in the Global South offered canonical shelter for conservative American dioceses, as they withdrew from the Episcopal Church after the Robinson consecration in 2003.168

The GAFCON movement (2008 and following) marked the emergence of the Global South as the dominant power in the Anglican Communion. One sign of this was the sending of "Anglican Mission in England" evangelists from the South, to reconvert England (and by implication, those large unconverted sectors in the Church of England). What attitude ought English Evangelicals to take toward the AMiE? "Are you an AmiE Evangelical?"169

The future belongs to the Global South in the Anglican Communion. Their story will be theirs to tell, and likewise the ecclesiology (indeed ecclesiologies) that they articulate. This is a good time to draw a line under the history of Anglican Evangelicals in the West, particularly in Britain where they have been most articulate theologically in the period since 1967. The ecclesiological ideas that Anglican Evangelicals have offered in the period since 1967 reflect the growing diversity of the movement in Britain and elsewhere. And these

87 ideas are necessarily provisional for the Anglican Communion, pending developments in the Global South. With those provisos, let us look at Anglican Evangelical views about the Church, in the period since 1967.

Modern Anglican Evangelicals and the Church

At the Keele Congress in 1967 John Stott had urged his fellow Evangelicals to engage with the Church of England and the ambient culture. Responding to this challenge, a number of representative Evangelical scholars published a three-volume collection of essays, entitled Obeying Christ in a Changing World. These essays were intended to prepare the delegates for the second Congress in 1977 in Nottingham, where each day would be focused on a particular theme. The second volume, on "The People of God," included the first serious contributions to ecclesiology by Anglican Evangelicals for over a century. The Congress devoted a day to this subject, with any array of seminars to choose from. Nevertheless at the next Congress, at Caister in 1988, Archbishop specifically challenged the delegates to continue to press into ecclesiology. So the next decade saw two substantive contributions by Evangelicals to the field. In 1992 Tim Bradshaw published The Olive Branch: An Evangelical of the Church. And in 1998 the well-known liturgical scholar Colin Buchanan offered Is the Church of England Biblical? An Anglican Ecclesiology. In between these two English works, the Australian scholar Kevin Giles wrote What on Earth is the Church? An Exploration in New Testament Theology in 1995. Other shorter works from this period include Roger Beckwith, Elders in Every City; John Stott, One People; and N.T. Wright's article, "Evangelical Anglican Identity: The Connection Between Bible, Gospel & Church."170

These works typify Anglican Evangelical reflections on the Church in the late 20th century. They embody the renaissance of theological study that John Stott hoped to elicit at Keele in 1967. They also reflect an awareness that the Anglican Evangelical tradition might well fragment several ways in the 1990s, but that a re-statement of the Reformers' doctrine of the Church might well help to solidify the Evangelical center. Together with the exploratory volume from 1977, these works offer a middle-of-the-road summary of modern Anglican Evangelical ecclesiology that has not been superseded.

These books also represent a return to the ecclesiology of the 16th century English Reformers, in terms of the nature of the Church and of its distinguishing marks. Modern Evangelical ecclesiology rejects the subjective individualism of the 18th century Evangelical revival, and its indifference to the question, "What is a true Church?" Likewise modern Evangelical scholars deprecate their forebears' withdrawal from the life of the national Church in the late 19th century. In returning to the Reformation, however, these late 20th century works naturally leave behind the Reformers' presuppositions about divine-right kingship and royal headship of the Church, which (despite persistent vestiges!) had become

88 obsolete by the early 19th century. Nor do modern Anglican Evangelicals entertain the assumption (cuius regio eius religio) that each political unit must be confessionally homogenous, or that the Church of England has a religious monopoly in the . The monarchial and national aspects of English Reformation ecclesiology had been tacitly ignored by the 18th century Evangelical revivalists, and are now explicitly ignored by their modern Evangelical descendents. Despite its vestigial establishment, the late 20th century Church of England is one body amongst many, both in Britain and in the provinces of the worldwide Anglican Communion. In this pluralistic environment, however, the Protestant theological core of English Reformation continued to supply the foundation for Evangelical ecclesiology in the 1990s.

The People of God

In the 16th century Thomas Cranmer defined the Church first of all as a "congregation of faithful men."171

The visible Church of Christ is a Congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure word of God is Preached and the Sacraments be duly Ministered, according to Christ’s Ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.172 (Article 6: BCP, Cummings, ed. 679)

The fundamental nature of the Church is its "peoplehood" and the primary metaphor for the Church is the "People of God."All the modern Evangelical scholars agree on this point. The Church is not to be understood as an institution, still less as a clerical caste (cf. 4 Lateran canon 1). The Church means the whole people of God, deriving their identity from the Covenant that the God of Israel made with them at Sinai.

The biblical notion of 'covenant' relationship between the God of Israel and his people controls this ecclesiology...173

But the Church is more than just a group of people. As W.H. Griffith-Thomas pointed out, the Church "is a congregation, not an aggregation."174 All the Evangelical authors agree that the People of God are a community.

(T)he Church is the community of God's people - a community which is bound together by a common allegiance and sustained by a common life in the Spirit.175

The basic nature of the church is a visible community of faith, guided by the word of the Lord, sealed with the covenant signs.176

89 First of all, it is clear that every contributor to the New Testament is of a common mind on at least one issue: there is but one Christian community...Membership in this community is predicated on belief in Christ, characterized by forgiveness of sins and the presence of the Holy Spirit, and realized through baptism.177

The Evangelical scholars value the New Testament metaphor of the People of God as the "Body of Christ," but they understand that image in a way that is consistent with Jesus' Ascension, and the sending of the Holy Spirit.

Whereas the catholic Anglican tradition stresses the fact that the church is in Christ, the evangelical stresses Christ in the church by the Spirit. The church is not so much a form of Christ as the people of Christ, in covenant with him.178

The seminal article by N.T. Wright in 1980 emphasized that the work of Christ was to reconstitute the People of God.

Israel - as the people of God but also the people in whom 's sin is seen to its full extent because of the law (Romans 5:20) - is reconstituted just as humanity has been. The church rises on Easter morning in place of the Israel that has died on the cross...179

And the Spirit-filled community begins to resemble the People of God as the original call on Sinai had intended. But this new community - tawdry as it often is - lives by faith in Christ, not by any achievement of its ultimate purpose.

There is no other claim to be God's people than on the basis of grace given and accepted in trustful faith.180

So the Covenant people of God live by grace, and accept this grace on faith. And faith is based on the word of God.

The Word of God

This brings us to the second clause of Cranmer's definition of the Church. At the heart of the Church's identity is the preaching of the word.

...in the which the pure word of God is Preached...181

90 All the Evangelical scholars agree on the primacy of the word.

Evangelical ecclesiology regards the faith people of God as created by the 'descending' and authoritative word of promise...In the beginning was the word which created the faith and evoked the response of faith.182

The church lives in the light of the great works of Jesus and the giving of the Spirit by dependence on the word...183

This constant dependence on the word - for identity, for hope, for instruction - means that the Church's being is defined not only by the preaching of the word, but also by obedience to that word. As Cranmer put it,

Wherefore although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to Decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce anything to be believed for necessity of salvation.184

So the Church looks to the Bible for authority. This means that the Church looks to the three- fold cord of Apostolicity as the late 2nd century Christians began to recognize it: the Canon, the nascent Creed as the authorized summary of the Good News, and the tradition of apostolic teaching that guided (and guides) the Church in the interpretation of the Canon.

There is indeed a standard tradition of interpretation that stems from the Apostles and remains faithful to their witness as the Church received it. As Tim Bradshaw puts it, "Apostolicity is of key importance to classical evangelical faith." 185 But in contrast with catholic Anglican thought, Evangelicals insist that faithfulness to "apostolicity," namely the true “apostolic succession," means faithfulness to the tradition of true teaching. Colin Buchanan refers to Irenaeus' idea of apostolic succession in the late 2nd century.

The whole point of this succession... is to demonstrate that the truth held and taught by the apostles has been handed down to our own day...This is notable to us, as this historical linkage is not succession in a place, nor succession by the laying on of hands, nor even succession in an office - but succession to a truth.186

This primacy of the word in the Church does not mean that the Bible gives us specific directions for every facet of the Church's life. Modern Anglican Evangelicals insist on the distinction between things necessary to salvation and "things indifferent," just as the 16th century Reformers did. Tim Bradshaw speaks for all the modern scholars when he argues that:

91 ...God has provided clearly and definitely in some areas of church life, but has left others more open and flexible. The aspects in which revelation firmly operates concern salvation in Christ; the areas in which the church has a freedom to act concern the structures and customs of the church...a central principle of the Reformation theological consensus was the idea of secondary issues, matters “'adiaphora," on which different situations could properly reach different conclusions.187

The only requirement in "matters indifferent" is that the Church "ought not to decree anything against" the teaching of Scripture.188 In matters of ceremony and polity, the Church has the liberty to adapt customs to suit present requirements, provided that these adaptations be "not contrary" to the word of God. In this the modern Evangelicals echo the leaders of the Elizabethan Church. Archbishop Whitgift asserted,

In matters of order, ceremonies, and government, it is sufficient if they be not repugnant to the scripture.'189

So the Bible speaks to the Church with sovereign authority in matters pertaining to salvation. In the case of "things indifferent," the standard is that nothing be done that arguably violates the clear teaching of Scripture.

The Sacraments

Emphasis upon the preeminence of the word does not mean that modern Anglican Evangelical scholars neglect the importance of the sacraments. On the whole, their sacramental theology returns to the principles of the Reformation, in the lineage that stretches further back from Calvin to Augustine. The sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion are "visible words" that sign and seal the promises of God in the Bible. As Tim Bradshaw explains,

The clearest way of understanding the evangelical reformed doctrine of sacraments is to realize that they are visible or dramatic forms of the gospel. They tell out the saving acts of God for his people. They are not really another means of grace so much as another form of the presentation of the word of grace, fundamentally the transforming word of the cross, of Christ crucified, of the very heart of the gospel itself.190

The promises of God are objective. Their validity does not depend on the faith of the believer, for the sacraments are (as Cranmer said) intended precisely to stir up that faith. They are:

92 certain sure witnesses and effectual signs of grace, and Gods good will towards us, by the which He doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our faith in Him.191

At the same time, as Buchanan observes, "worthy reception" does matter and the point of both Baptism and Holy Communion is the transformation of the recipient. Therefore:

...there is no sacrament in the 'consecrated' elements independent of proper reception of them, and all liturgical usage must move towards reception, and all spiritual benefits are to be found in the 'worthy' (i.e. penitent and believing) recipient.192

"The seal without faith gains nothing except judgement," Bradshaw points out.193 Thus modern Evangelical scholars reiterate the Reformers' rejection of any ex opere operato understanding of the sacraments, as well as any notion that the sacraments are meritorious good works.

These considerations continue to cause difficulty for Evangelicals apropos the sacrament of baptism. On the one hand, Evangelicals continue to deny that infants are invariably regenerated in baptism, despite the categorical language of Cranmer's rite:

Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this child is regenerate...194

On the other hand, most Church of England Evangelicals also resist the "house church" tendency to side with the Anabaptists and opt for adult baptism. The way forward seems to be through a recovery of Reformed , an understanding of the church (however divided into churches) as God's people, with baptism as the covenant rite of inclusion. Tim Bradshaw sums up this perspective:

Baptism, in particular, does not primarily signify the act of response or decision, by the believer: its main focus lies on objective grace, the act of the crucified Lord. This is what is believed, what is sacramentally received, this is what is signed and sealed in baptism. Baptism is not therefore primarily the opportunity to focus the individual's act of faith, it is not first and foremost signalling a profession of commitment. Rather it heralds Christ's commitment and atonement, the root of salvation; our response is the fruit of that work of grace. Here the radical reformed doctrine of grace undergirds its baptismal theology...195

Infant baptism as into the covenant people of God assumes, of course, that the covenant people will do their part in raising the child to walk in God's ways, and to "own the covenant" in due time. This assumption is hard to make honestly in contemporary Britain, where 98% of the population do not attend Church of England parishes regularly,

93 yet some 50% can legally present their children for baptism.196 This situation is obviously problematical for Evangelicals in the Church of England.197 Elsewhere in the Anglican Communion different problems obtain.

Regarding Holy Communion, modern Evangelical scholars tend to reassert Reformation theology, and in particular Cranmer's insistence on the finished work of Christ on the Cross.198Anglo-Catholic eucharistic theology since the 1840s has proposed that the celebrant joins the risen and ascended Christ in pleading the fruits of His sacrifice before the throne of God in heaven.199 Modern Evangelicals reject this notion, and insist that in Holy Communion the church thankfully remembers the Cross, and responds with a "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving" and of self-offering ("and here we present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies..."). But the latter movement is secondary to the former, and completely dependent upon it. As Bradshaw puts it,

In the eating and drinking, the whole church celebrates the eucharist, the sacramental climax of receiving grace. All counter movements, from the church to God, by way of offering of Christ's sacrifice to God afresh, are removed in favour of the 'one way street' of grace...The church's sacrifice is that of thanks and praise for the mighty saving act of the suffering servant200

The "Basis of Belief" statement (shared by a number of Evangelical organizations) puts the matter in a similar fashion.

Holy Communion is the sign of the living, nourishing presence of Christ through his Spirit to his people: the memorial of his one, perfect, completed and all-sufficient sacrifice for sin, from whose achievement all may benefit but in whose offering none can share; and an expression of our corporate life of sacrificial thanksgiving and service.201

Since the essence of Holy Communion is not primarily sacrificial, therefore, the identity of the celebrant is not "priestly."This consideration will strongly influence the modern Evangelical theology of leadership and ministry, and of ordination.

Ordained Ministry

The Anglican Evangelicals' emphasis on the Church as the People of God has several consequences for their approach to ordained ministry.202

First of all, Anglican Evangelicals stress that the People of God (universal, regional and local) comprises all Christians together, with a strong tendency to resist either

94 clericalism or any notion of ontological difference amongst the members. Michael Green puts the case forcefully.

We have divided the Church into two compartments, clerical and lay. We have, for all practical purposes, ascribed 'ministry' to the clergy. We have seen ministry in terms of status not function. We have reserved absolution and celebration jealously to that elite status of professional priests (as if one strand within the priestly body of Christ was more priestly than another). The contrast with the New Testament could hardly be more complete.203

John Stott echoes Green's sentiments.

Extreme forms of clericalism dare to reintroduce the notion of privilege into the only human community in which it has been abolished. Where Christ has made out of two one, the clerical mind makes two again, the one higher and the other lower, the one active and the other passive, the one really important because vital to the life of the Church, the other not vital and therefore less important. I do not hesitate to say that to interpret the Church in terms of a privileged clerical caste or hierarchical structure is to destroy the New Testament doctrine of the Church.204

Secondly, the Church is not constituted by its ordained ministry, however important the latter is for the effective performance of the Church's mission. Tim Bradshaw says,

The Church is not constituted by the ordained ministry, but this ministry serves a crucial role: the continuing teaching of the faith, the handing on of the tradition, in the pastoral and evangelistic life of the people of God. The ministry, the service of Christ in the whole church means that the whole body is called to play its part; the ordained ministry subserves the ministry of all the people: such is the ecclesiological theology of the evangelical Anglican... The church, the people of God, is theologically prior to the ministry, and the presbyteral task is to foster and serve this spreading of the gospel by an apostolic church.205

Kevin Giles likewise argues that the church precedes the ordained ministry both in time and theological significance.

Nothing seen in the New Testament has endorsed the view that the ordering of the church was given from the start, or that the threefold order of bishops, priests and deacons was known in the first century. This means that the church is not defined by its ministerial structures; it is defined by its communal existence given by God, in Christ, and by the presence of the Spirit who provides the leaders needed.206

95 Thirdly, the Spirit has provided leaders for the Church from the very beginning, and the early 1st century church seems to have initially borrowed the institution of collegial local elders from the Jewish synagogue.

(In the New Testament) the existing synagogue structure of local elders, who had pastoral charge and teaching function, seems to have been appropriated by the earliest church congregations.207

Finally, the elder, or presbyter, goes back to the roots of biblical religion, in the Old Testament not just the New. The office has the authority of the whole Bible...Before the beginning of the Christian era, it had largely taken over from the priests and Levites their instituted responsibility for the ministry of the word. Our Lord and his apostles were elders, who embraced this special responsibility, and they transmitted the office they had inherited to their first disciples...208

Fourthly, the ministry of collegial elders in the early Christian house churches was not merely charismatic and functional, consisting solely of the gifts that the Spirit freely dispensed, or even the character that the elders exhibited (however important the latter was, as I Timothy 3 makes clear). Eldership was also an office, dependent on the call of God and not (in this sense) on any personal qualifications. N.T. Wright's seminal article argues that the office of presbyter involved great responsibility, and an objective quality dependent on the call of God. Therefore one may in a certain careful and very Protestant sense say that the presbyterate does have a certain ontological quality. Wright uses the term not to imply any ontological change occurring in ordination, and so constituting a sacramental clerical caste, but rather to stress that objective nature of God's call.

(T)o stress the ontological character of the ordained ministry is to point away from what someone is in himself, and towards the call and historical action of God. That, not the self- confidence of the gifted leader, is the true basis of humble, Christ-like, God-centered ministry.209

But of course the functions of the presbyterate were crucial, and here the Anglican Evangelicals' emphasis on the Word of God strongly conditions their understanding of those ministries.

First of all, the primary task of the elder is to teach. As Roger Beckwith puts it,

(T)he basic tasks of the ordained bishop and presbyter are teaching (including evangelism) and pastoral care. The bishop is not primarily an administrator, and the presbyter is not

96 primarily a celebrant of the sacraments (vital though the celebration of the sacraments is) but they are both primarily pastors and teachers.210

Not surprisingly, John Stott makes the same point.

The chief function of the pastor is teaching, for the chief duty of the shepherd is to feed or pasture the sheep. The ordained ministry is fundamentally a teaching ministry.211

Likewise Michael Green:

So far as we know, liturgical functions did not form a significant part of early Christian leadership. Nowhere in the New Testament does it appear to be a matter of great significance who baptizes, leads worship, or presides at the Lord's Table.212

And finally Tim Bradshaw:

As regards the issue of a priestly role for the ministry, the work of Bishop Lightfoot remains the standard text. Priesthood, a term never used for the presbyterate in the New Testament, cannot be any kind of mediating priesthood in the Old Testament sense, but must have its meaning redefined pastorally. The ministerial office, according to apostolic practice and doctrine, is centrally that of pastor-teacher.213

Secondly, therefore, the Anglican Evangelical tradition believes that modern Christian leadership stands in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets (including above all Jesus) and not in the tradition of the Old Testament priesthood. As Tim Bradshaw puts it,

The ministry is apostolic, like all the church, in that it repeats and echoes the original proclamation of the apostles. Rather than a ministerial priesthood, this tradition regards its ministry as ministerial to the prophetic and apostolic witness.214

And in another place,

Evangelical Anglican faith distinguishes between the primary creative approach of grace, and the secondary dependent response of faith. As regards the ordained ministry, the most holy and awesome office is the apostolic prophetic, the ministry of the divine word which bears within it the way, the truth and the life. 'The Church,' for Forsyth, 'is a great priest, the ministry is a great prophet.'215

97

Thirdly, the primacy of the word in Anglican Evangelical ecclesiology determines its view of ordination. Tim Bradshaw quotes a concise definition by Michael Green:

What then is ordination? 'It is the setting apart, because of God's calling, of those who exercise a ministry of the Word logically prior to other ministries, which enables the church to develop into the pure Body of Christ'216

Colin Buchanan refers back to the Reformation Ordinal as he describes how Archbishop Cranmer wholly redefined the medieval understanding of ordination and the calling of the presbyter. In the Middle Ages (as we have seen above in Chapter 1) the newly ordained priest was handed a chalice and paten, and given authority to offer sacrifice for the living and the dead. In Archbishop Cranmer's rite, the presbyter received a Bible and with it the authority to preach the word of God and to administer the sacraments specifically in the cure to which he was appointed. Preaching the word came first, with the sacraments as signs and seals, confirming the word of grace announced by the presbyter, which was his preeminent ministry.217

In light of the Anglican Evangelical emphasis on the people of God and the word of God, what does it make of the episcopate?

The Anglican Evangelical tradition firmly asserts (first of all) that the true apostolic succession consists of fidelity to the apostolic testimony to Jesus, which is summed up in the New Testament. As Colin Buchanan puts it,

(T)he great issue to the apostles themselves was the handing on of the witness to Jesus, handing on indeed the knowledge of Jesus, and ensuring that the Church remained loyal to that deposit of faith. From that standpoint, the apostles had no need or cause to hand on their office, for in the New Testament writings they were handing on their own witness...It is fair to say therefore that, however romantic or appealing the ideas woven round an 'apostolic succession' of bishops succeeding to offices held by the apostles, it cannot be demonstrated from the New Testament. The whole bequest of the apostles is summed up in the apostolic faith, and the deposit is available to us in the writings of the key apostles collected for us in the New Testament.218

Tim Bradshaw makes the same point.

98 The apostles were succeeded by the whole church, together with the variety of ministries they exercised, save that of unique, authoritative witness and normative interpreter of Jesus, the ministry now played by the New Testament.219

The idea of apostolic succession to an office grew up later than this idea of apostolicity as summed up in the writings of the emergent New Testament canon. As early as 96 AD or so, Clement of Rome referred to a nascent idea of apostolic succession in office - but the office to which he referred is the plural and collegial presbyterate. That was the office of leadership as the Corinthian Christians knew it in the 90s AD.220 In the letters of Ignatius of Antioch (circa 110-115) the threefold order does appear. But there is no notion of apostolic succession, and Ignatius justified the three orders on the basis that bishops, priests and deacons represented , the apostolic council and the Christ respectively.221 Finally in the 190s, Irenaeus of Lyon combined the ideas of apostolic succession and the monarchial episcopate. But he was not arguing for a succession of sacramental or jurisdictional authority in the episcopate. Rather, he was emphasizing the continuity of apostolic teaching that the bishops in major Roman cities represent. If you want to identify true teaching, says Irenaeus, go and listen to what has been taught since time out of mind in the oldest communities of Christian house churches in the major cities of the Empire.222 We would need to look to Cyprian of Carthage in the 250s for a nascent concept of episcopal jurisdictional or sacramental authority in apostolic succession.223

So as Colin Buchanan sums the matter up,

It will be clear that 'succession' had no meaning in the first two centuries save in the sense of 'successive handing on of an unchanged Gospel.'224

Secondly, as to the origins in antiquity of the episcopate, Anglican Evangelicals are willing to concede the argument that Cranmer made in the preface to the Ordinal:

It is evident unto all men diligently reading holy Scripture and ancient Authors, that from the Apostles time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church: Bishops, Priests and Deacons...225

That is to say, if we assume that John the Evangelist lived on into the reign of the Emperor Trajan (AD 98-117) and that Ignatius had been "monarchial" bishop of Antioch for a number of years before his arrest in 110 or so, we can agree with Colin Buchanan that Cranmer's argument is "just about true."226 However, as Buchanan goes on to say,

We know nothing of when or how bishops arose in virtually every city of the Roman empire; we know nothing of any of the apostles passing on their office; we know nothing of

99 the laying on of hands or of 'ordination' till the beginning of the third century (and then the Hippolytan text is open to grave suspicion); the extant shreds of first-century and second- century evidence give no hint of a common pattern of 'ordained' ministry at all...227

Thirdly, what about the idea that the episcopate in tactile succession is the esse of the Church? Anglican Evangelicals are quick to affirm the episcopate on practical grounds. Wide- area pastoral leadership is extremely useful in the life of the Church, and should be retained. As Tim Bradshaw puts it,

The evangelical claims to stand in the mainline tradition of Anglicanism, for the majority of its post-Reformation existence, in holding the view that the episcopal form of church government is ancient, with a proven track record, and not to be abandoned. But episcopacy is ministerial to the church and it cannot be said to be a test of a true church. It may be said to be of the church's 'bene esse' or well-being, but not of its 'esse' nor its 'plene esse' or fullness of being.228

Buchanan makes approximately the same point.

Thus the highest contention we can make for the episcopal system of the Church of England is that it is of the bene esse (perhaps even the optime esse) of the Church, and certainly not of the esse, and therefore not non-negotiable.229

The essential marks of a true Church are therefore, as Anglican Evangelicals have maintained since the Reformation, the pure preaching of the word of God and the due administration of the sacraments,230 not the Church's polity or its ordained ministry. Those features of the Church's life must not offend or contradict any clear teaching of Scripture. But with that proviso, their precise shape is - as the Reformers insisted - left to human authority to specify, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Summary

(1) Modern Anglican Evangelical scholars return to the of the English Reformation, while discarding the latter's national and monarchial characteristics for obvious reasons.

(2) Specifically, modern Evangelical scholars emphasize Article 19, which says that the Church first of all is a "congregation," that is to say, a people. The Biblical image of the People of God undergirds modern Anglican Evangelical ecclesiology.

100

(3) Likewise, the modern Evangelical tradition has emphasized (as in Article 19) the primacy of the Word in the constitution of the Church, in its ongoing life, and in the ministry of its leaders. Sacraments are viewed as signs and seals, guaranteeing the promises of Christ in the Gospel.

(4) As polity is a "thing indifferent" (an adiaphoron) it may be specified by duly constituted human authority in the Church, with the proviso that nothing be done that contradicts the clear teaching of Scripture. By contrast, matters necessary for salvation face a higher standard: they must manifestly articulate the positive teaching of Scripture on the subject.

(5) Presbyters are primarily preachers and teachers of the Word. They are not "priests" in any sacrificial sense of the word (i.e. they are presbuteroi and not hiereis). The modern Evangelical theology of Holy Communion replicates Cranmer's doctrine, as expressed in the 1552 and 1662 Books of Common Prayer.

(6) Bishops are an ancient order, but their monarchial expression post-dates the New Testament. They are manifestly useful for the bene esse of the Church, but their existence does not constitute the Church, nor are they essential to it (of its esse).

(7) The true apostolic succession entails the continuity of true Apostolic teaching, now available to the Church in the Bible, which bishops are charged with maintaining and promoting.

101 Endnotes

1 Norman Davies, Europe: A History (Harper Perennial, 1996), 7. 2 R.W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Penguin Books, 1970), 32. Charlemagne's advisor Alcuin of York wrote to his monarch, "Our Lord Jesus Christ has set you up as the ruler of the Christian people...On you alone depends the whole safety of the churches of Christ" (Ibid.) 3 Ibid., 100-132. See also Brian Tierney, The Middle Ages: Volume I, Sources of Medieval History (McGraw-Hill, 1999), 117-130 for the documents relating to the Investiture Struggle. 4 See J. R. H. Moorman, A History of the Church in England (Adam and Charles Black: 1976), 59-114 for a summary of this whole period. 5 Tierney, 290. 6 Joseph R. Strayer and Dana C. Munro, The Middle Ages: 395-1500, 5th edition (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970), 324-326; H.G. Koenigsberger, Medieval Europe 400-1500 (Longman, 1987), 238-239. 7 Cyprian argued that the episcopacy "is one, of which each holds his part in its totality," quoted in W.H. C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Fortress, 1984), 352. 8 Ibid., 626-628 for Damasus's imperial pretensions. 9 Walter Ullmann, A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages (Methuen, 1972), 20. 10 Tierney, 122. 11 Southern, 104-125. 12 Moorman, 81-84. 13 Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250-1550 (Yale,1980), 134-181 for this whole period. 14 Ibid., 154. 15 Ullmann, 306 ff. 16 For the Pre-Reformation Church in England, see especially Moorman, 137-157. 17 "The liturgy lay at the heart of medieval religion, and the Mass lay at the heart of the liturgy," Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (Yale, 1992), 91. See Duffy's entire chapter 3 on the Mass for its centrality in late medieval piety in England, and for the popular notion that the priest was re-sacrificing Christ on the altar. 18 For Purgatory see Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (University of Chicago, 1981), passim. For the proliferation of chantries in 14th century England, see Alan Kreider, English Chantries: The Road to Dissolution (Harvard, 1979), 71-92. 19 Including in this sense the episcopate, those with the authority to "make" priests. 20 Canon I of the Fourth Lateran Council: www.fordham.edu/Halsall/basis/lateran4.asp. 21 Massey Hamilton Shepherd Jr., The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary (Oxford, 1950), 546. 22 The late medieval summary of the ordo salutis was the assertion, Facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam, "God will not deny grace to those who do what is in them." 23 Ozment, 22-42. See also Heiko Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology (Harvard, 1963), 146-184. 24 Duffy, 96. See also Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (Adam & Charles Black, 1945), 620-621 25 See Dickens, 46-60 for a Lollard "maximalist" view, which stresses the importance of the Wycliffite movement for the genesis of the English Reformation. See Christopher Haigh, English : Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 51-55 for a Lollard "minimalist" response.

102 26 Dix, 686-687. 27 Gerald Bray, editor, Documents of the English Reformation (Fortress, 1994), 78. 28 Dickens, 130-160. 29Leslie P. Fairfield, John Bale: Mythmaker for the English Reformation (Wipf & Stock, 2006), 76-120 for Bale's development of a new English national mythology in light of the Reformation. 30 William Haller, Foxe's Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (Jonathan Cape, 1963) is the classic work on Foxe's new English national metanarrative. For Foxe and the Church of England, see V. Norskov Olsen, John Foxe and the Elizabethan Church (University of California, 1973). 31 I will be quoting the Thirty-Nine Articles in their 1662 form in Brian Cummings, editor, The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559 and 1662 (Oxford, 2011): in this case, 679 and 682-683. 32 Oliver O'Donovan, On the thirty Nine Articles (Paternoster, 1986), 92. 33 John Jewel, An Apology of the Church of England, John Booty, editor (Church Publishing, 2002), 24. 34 Bray, 115-116. 35 Quoted in Dix, 652-653. For the occasion of this dictum, see Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer (Yale, 1996), 277-280. 36 Leo F. Solt, Church and State in Early Modern England 1509-1640 (Oxford, 1990), 25-26. For a maximalist view of Henry's pretensions to govern the Church of England, see Malcolm B. Parnell III, Royal Priesthood in the English Reformation (Oxford, 2103), 123 ff. 37 David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography (Yale, 1994), 242. Anne Boleyn thoughtfully gave Henry this book to read, which he did with evident relish. He told her, "This is a book for me and for all kings to read:" J.J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1968), 247. 38 Tierney, 122. 39 Sermons or Homilies Appointed to Be Read in Churches (Focus Christian Ministries Trust, 1986), 72. These are the opening words of the homily An Exhortation Concerning Good Order, and Obedience to Rulers and Magistrates. 40 Troilus and Cressida, Act I, Scene 3, in W.J. Craig, editor, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Oxford, 1955), 672. For further details on the 16th century hierarchical worldview, see C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image (Cambridge, 1964), especially 92-121; and E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (Vintage Books, no date), passim. 41 Bray, 162-163 42 Dickens, 142. 43 Ibid., 359. 44 Wallace MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I (Edward Arnold, 1993), 300. See also Dix, 654: "The ministers of the eucharist are thus acting as such simply as officials of the secular government..." I shall note below that I think Dix's judgment is unfair. 45 Cummings, editor, The Book of Common Prayer, 684. 46 Ibid., 629. 47 MacCulloch, 279-280. 48 Philip H. E. Thomas, "Doctrine of the Church," in et al., editors, The Study of Anglicanism (SPCK/Fortress, 2004), 252-253. The material omitted in the ellipsis contains nothing to qualify or to refute Thomas's judgment in the rest of the quote. 49 The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI, (Everyman : J. M. Dent & Sons, 1910), 292. 50 PG. W. Bromiley,Thomas Cranmer Theologian, (Oxford, 1956), 51.

103 51 Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Everyman's Library, 1965), 333. The quotation is from Book III, Chapter 10, Section 6. 52 Bernard J. Verkamp, The Indifferent Mean: Adiaphorism in the English Reformation to 1559 (Ohio University Press, 1977), 170. 53 Article 20: "Wherefore although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet it ought not to Decree any thing against the same; so besides the same ought it not to enforce anything to be believed for necessity of Salvation" (Cummings, editor, The Book of Common Prayer, 679). 54 Cummings, editor, The Book of Common Prayer, 679. 55 Personal communication from the Rt. Rev. John H. Rodgers Jr. 56 Quoted in Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, Theology of the English Reformers, revised and expanded edition (Abingdon, PA, 1997), 218. 57 Ibid., 220. 58 Cummings, editor, The Book of Common Prayer, 680. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid., 682. 61 Shepherd, 546. 62 Cummings, editor, The Book of Common Prayer, 642. 63 Ibid., 635-6. 64 Dix, 654. 65 Ibid., 680. Emphasis original. 66 The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1910), 212-230 and 377-393. 67 Ashley Null, Thomas Cranmer's Doctrine of Repentance (Oxford, 2000), 244. 68 Dix, 672. 69 The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI, 222. 70 Ibid., 389. 71 Ibid., 223 72 Ibid., 389-390. 73 Ibid., 225. 74 Ibid., 389. Elizabeth I was famously to combine the two formulae (1549 and 1552) in her eucharistic rite of 1559, with a view to inviting her still-largely-Catholic subjects to approach the Lord's Table with a clear conscience. The maintenance of national unity trumped the achievement of theological clarity. 75 Moorman's standard Church of England history says of the 18th century, "Church life in the parishes was formal, pedestrian and prosaic, but it was not dead" (J.R.H. Moorman, A History of the Church in England, 3rd Edition (Adam & Charles Black, 1976), 288. But mutatis mutandis as Alice Roosevelt Longworth remarked when she heard that Calvin Coolidge had died, "How could they tell?" , Church and State in England in the XVIIIth Century (Octagon Books, 1975), chapter 9, details the Church's financial inequalities and the prevalence of pluralism and non-residence. 76 "The church they saw as a meeting place to hear the word of God, to pray and to praise. It was not usually seen as an object of theological interest or importance." B.G. Worrall, The Making of the : Christianity in England Since 1800 9SPCK, 2004. 77 Peter Marshall, Reformation England 1480-1642 (Arnold, 2003) offers useful summaries of Elizabeth's policy towards Puritans (113-142) and Roman Catholics (168-193). There is a vast literature now showing that Puritan

104 Calvinism was in fact the mainstream in the Church of England by the end of Elizabeth's reign. See for example the magisterial Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559-1625 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982) and Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge, 1982). 78 Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c.1590-1640 (Oxford, 1987) studies in detail the growth of a counter-revolutionary early "high church" party in the Church of England during the reigns of James I and Charles I. 79 Marshall, 194-220 summarizes the policies and objectives of Archbishop William Laud, and their fatal identification with the early Stuart dynasty. The standard biography of Laud is still H. R. Trevor-Roper's classic Archbishop Laud, second edition, 1965. 80 The literature on the (aka the "English Revolution" by fans of Puritanism and the "Great Rebellion" by fans of Laud and Charles I) is oceanically vast. One way in might be the old classic, Christopher Hill, God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (Dial Press, 1970). My favorites are still C.V. Wedgwood, The King's Peace 1637-1641 (Collins, 1966) and The King's War (Collins, 1966) which demonstrate that narrative history is still both possible and eminently readable. 81 The standard work on the Restoration Church is John Spurr, The Restoration Church of England 1646-1689 (Yale, 1991). 82 For the so-called "Glorious Revolution" see e.g. Stuart E. Prall, The Bloodless Revolution: England, 1688 (Anchor, 1972). 83 Sykes, chapters 6 and 8, describes the Latitudinarian mentality. 84 Doreen Rosman, The Evolution of the English Churches 1500-2000 (Cambridge, 2003), 136-146 offers a useful summary of 18th century parish life. For more detail, see Sykes, chapters 5 and 9. 85 The events of the late 1820s "meant the abandonment once and for all of the theory of Hooker and the Elizabethan Settlement that Church and State were really one...From now onwards it came to be an accepted thing that a man could be a perfectly good citizen without belonging to the Church of England, or indeed to any Church at all..." Moorman, 330. 86 There were some residual kerfuffles under Queen Anne in the early 18th century, but the overall trend was in the direction of royal inattention. To be sure, George III did take an interest in the appointment of worthy (as well as politically reliable) men to the bench of bishops (Sykes, 399-402). But this was a far cry from exercising the "Supreme Headship" that the Tudors had modeled, with energetic attention to both the doctrine and the worship of the English Church. 87 The Elizabethan Settlement remains a battlefield between historians of "protestant" and "catholic" sympathies. Evangelicals think that Elizabeth got exactly what she wanted. Anglo-Catholics think that her advisers pushed her much farther toward Protestantism than she wished to go. For a brief summary see Marshall, 115-119. 88 For the ecclesiology of the Henrician and Elizabethan Reformers, see Paul Avis, Anglicanism and the Christian Church: Theological Resources in Historical Perspective, revised and expanded edition (T&T Clark, 2002), 3-58. 89 Ibid., 61-84. See also Tyacke, passim. 90 According to Dix, "The revision of 1662 thus tried to consolidate the general reaction from the ideas expressed by Cranmer in his liturgy, while retaining the whole substance of his liturgy unchanged" (Dix, 693). It seems anachronistic of Dix to view these two small changes as harbingers of Catholic reform in the mid -19th century, or as significant diversions from the Protestant character of the BCP. Anti-Catholic sentiment in England was still virulent in the 1660s, enough to have squelched these changes had they been seen as the thin end of an Anglo-Catholic wedge. 91 Arnold A. Dallimore, George Whitefield, Volume 1 (Cornerstone Books, 1970), 76- 77 Dallimore supposes that the conversion took place in and around Oxford. Harry Stout thinks that the breakthrough occurred after Whitefield had returned to Gloucester. Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of

105 Modern Evangelicalism (Eerdmans, 1991), 27. In fact Whitefield’s journal bid., 12.and letters do not specify the location. 92 Dallimore, 249 ff. 93 Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys (InterVarsity Press, 2003), chapter 3. Noll summarizes the remarkably coincidental eruption of revival in England, Wales and New England in the four years 1734-1738. 94 D.W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain ((Unwin Hyman, 1989), chapter 2 describes the circumstances and the early heroes of the Evangelical movement in the Church of England. For a variety of lively stories, the old chestnut G. R. Balleine, A History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England (Church Book Room Press, 1951) is still readable. 95 John Pollock, Wilberforce (St. Martin's Press, 1977), chapters 4-6 give a good account of Wilberforce's conversion and his engagement with the issue of slavery. For the Anglican Evangelicals' transformational impact on England, see Ian C. Bradley, The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians (Macmillan, 1976) 96 For Simeon's ministry at Cambridge, see especially Evan Hopkins, Charles Simeon of Cambridge (Hodder and Stoughton, 1977), chapters 2-6. 97 For the continuities and discontinuities between Reformation Evangelicalism and the movement in the 18th and 19th centuries, see Bebbington, chapters 1-2. 98 Ibid., 12. 99 Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity, Volume 4 (Harper & Brothers, 1941) identified the period 1815-1914 as the "great century." 100 Stephen Neill, A History of Christian Missions (Penguin Books, 1964), chapter 9, summarizes the Anglican Evangelical contribution to the missionary movement in England and its fruit in the nascent British Empire. 101 , The Victorian Church, Volume I, 442: The Evangelicals "had little faith in devices, laws, canons, convocations. Reform was of the heart. To the Ecclesiastical Commission they were indifferent. The Church might thus be reformed and still be dead." 102 D. Bruce Hindmarsh, John Newton and the English Evangelical Tradition (Eerdmans, 2001), 322. 103 Hindmarsh writes, "Likewise in 1788 and again in 1798 the members of the Eclectic Society agreed in affirming that there is no express form of church order binding upon the consciences of all" (Ibid., note 69) The Eclectic Society was a fellowship of Evangelical clergy and laypeople for mutual encouragement and for transformational strategizing. 104 Ibid., 318-319. 105 Hopkins, chapter 3 describes Simeon's tireless ministry to the parishioners of Holy Trinity, Cambridge over the more than fifty years of his tenure there. 106 William Wilberforce, A Practical View of Christianity (Hendrickson, 1996), 200-201, 211-212. See 197-198 for his positive assessment of the Reformation formularies. 107 Bebbington, 11. 108 Hopkins, 28. 109 Christopher J. Cocksworth, Evangelical Eucharistic Thought in the Church of England (Cambridge University Press, 1993), 76. 110 The Book of Common Prayer (, 2011), 412. 111 Chadwick, I, 250 ff. 112 Hindmarsh, 320.

106 113 The classic chronological history of Whitefield's ministry is Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield, 2 volumes (Banner of Truth Trust, 1970, 1979). More recent studies include Frank Lambert, "Pedlar in Divinity:" George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals (Princeton University Press, 1994) and Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (William B. Eerdmans, 1991). 114 See E. Clowes Chorley, Men and Movements in the American Episcopal Church (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1946), 5- 25. 115 Ibid, 36-39. 116 For McIlvaine and the 19th century Episcopal Evangelical movement in general, see Diana Hochstedt Butler, Standing Against the Whirlwind: Evangelical Episcopalians in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 1995). 117 For the old High Church movement in general, see Robert Bruce Mullen, Episcopal Vision/American Reality: High Church Theology and Social Thought in Evangelical America (Yale University Press, 1986). For the aesthetic ethos of both parties before the 1840s, see David L. Holmes, A Brief History of the Episcopal Church (Trinity Press International, 1993), 96-103. For the common syllabus, see Robert W. Prichard, The Nature of Salvation: Theological Consensus in the Episcopal Church, 1801-1873 (University of Illinois Press, 1997), 7-35. 118 See Butler, chapters 4 and 5 for this whole period, from an Evangelical point of view. 119 Allen C. Guelzo, For the Union of Evangelical : The Irony of the Reformed Episcopalians (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994) offers a comprehensive and engaged history of the schism. 120 Butler, chapter 7 sketches this sea-change thoughtfully 121 Ibid., 47. 122 Mullen, chapter 3 ("The Hobartian Synthesis") gives a detailed account of his ecclesiology. 123 Butler, 46-50. 124 J.R.H. Moorman, A History of the Church in England (Adam & Charles Black, 1976), 357. 125 D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (Unwin Hyman, 1989), 107 126 Ibid., 106; Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, I (Adam and Charles Black, 1971), 446. 127 Stephen Neill, Anglicanism (Penguin, 1965), 234, note 2. 128 Kenneth Hylson-Smith, Evangelicals in the Church of England 1734-1984 (T&T Clark, 1988), 158. 129 G.R. Balleine, A History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England (Church Book Room Press, 1951), 126ff. Those six societies were the Church Missionary Society (1799), the Religious Tract Society (1799), the British and Foreign Bible Society (1804), The London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews (1809), the Colonial and Continental Church Society (1823 and 1851), and the Church Pastoral Aid Society (1836). Soon thereafter came the South American Missionary Society (1844). 130 Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity, Volume 6, The Great Century: North Africa and Asia (Zondervan, 1971), passim. 131 Stephen Neill, A History of Christian Missions (Penguin, 1964), chapter 10. 132 Chadwick I, 446. 133 Ian Bradley, The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians (Macmillan, 1976), 126ff. 134 poetryfoundation.org (Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach) 135 online-literature.com (Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H.) 136 Hylson-Smith, 137. 137 Bebbington, 141. 138 Balleine, 248: Neill, Anglicanism, 238 notes that in 1914, some 5,700 parishes had chapters of the Church Missionary Society, a pretty good estimate of Evangelical strength.

107 139 Bebbington, 147. 140 Hylson-Smith, 160-164, 166-167. 141 Neill, Anglicanism, chapter 12. 142 Neill, History of Christian Missions, chapter 10. 143 Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (Adam & Charles Black, 1975), xvi, note 1: "In this respect it is more properly described as the 'Cambridge Movement.' It was the 'Cambridge Ecclesiological Society' which led the way in changes to worship expressive of the changes in theology advocated at Oxford." 144 The Standard work on the Ritualist program is James F. White, The Cambridge Movement: The Ecclesiologists and the Gothic Revival (Cambridge, 1979), passim. 145 Hylson-Smith, 131-132. 146 Bradley, 133; Hylson-Smith, 208. 147 Bernard M.G. Greardon, Religious Thought in the Victorian Age, second edition (Longman, 1995), 337. 148 Randle Maswaring, From Controversy to Co-Existence: Evangelicals in the Church of England 1914-1980 (Cambridge, 1985), vii. 149 J.I. Packer & N.T. Wright, Anglican Evangelical Identity, Yesterday and Today (Regent College Publishing, 2008), 53. 150 Adrian Hastings, A History of English Christianity, 1920-1990 (SCM Press, 1991), 62-63. 151 Manwaring, chapter 2. 152 Hylson-Smith, 257-261; Manwaring, 39ff. 153 Ibid., 57-58. 154 Arthur , An Era in Anglican Theology: From Gore to Temple (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1960), 159- 161. 155 Stephen Judd and Kenneth Cable, Sydney Anglicans (Anglican Information Office, Sydney, 1 987), chapters 14-17, offer a sympathetic introduction to the modern Archdiocese of Sydney. For a contrarian critique of the Sydney ethos, see Muriel Porter, Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism (Ashgate Publishing Company, 2011). 156 Alister Chapman, Godly Ambition: John Stott and the Evangelical Movement (Oxford, 2012), chapter 4 157 For the impact of the 1960s see e.g. Hastings, 580-586.158 Ibid., 551. 159 Ibid., 603. 160 For England see churchofengland.org/statistics for mission/2011 ; for Wales see brin.ac.uk/churchinWalesstatistics. 161 Grace Davie, Religion in Britain Since 1945: Believing Without Belonging (Blackwell, 1995), 56. 162 Personal communication from the Rev. J.R.J. Burley; and I remember a talk by the Dean of Bath Minster, who said that on September 11, 2001 a large crowd of students came to the Minster, looking for comfort and for some context in which to understand the day. 163 Davie, chapter 10. 164 Manwaring, 204ff. 165 Hylson-Smith, 332-336. 166 For the Reform movement, see reform.org.uk and its links. 167 For Ridley Hall, see ridley.cam.ac.uk and for a moderate "open" Evangelical perspective see fulcrum-anglican.org.uk and links.

108 168 Miranda K. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis (Princeton, 2007) gives a responsible account of this process. 169 For the GAFCON movement, see gafcon.org and its links. 170 Other distinguished contributions to Anglican ecclesiology in this period include works by Paul Avis and Stephen Sykes, but this paper focuses on scholars clearly identified with the Anglican Evangelical tradition. 171 In contemporary idiom "men" referred to "people" in a gender-inclusive sense (Shorter OED 1196: "man" = homo and not vir in the primary sense). See The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, C.T. Onions, editor (Oxford, 1965), 1196. 172 The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559 and 1662, Brian Cummings, editor(Oxford, 2011), 679. The text quoted is Article 6. 173 Tim Bradshaw, The Olive Branch: An Evangelical Anglican Doctrine of the Church(Paternoster, 1992), 129; cf. Colin Buchanan, Is the Church of England Biblical? An Anglican Ecclesiology (Darton, Longman + Todd, 1998), 56. 174 W. H. Griffith-Thomas, The Principles of Theology: An Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles (Vine Books, 1978), 271. 175 Obeying Christ in a Changing World, II: The People of God, Ian Cundy, editor (Collins-World,1977), 23. 176 Bradshaw, 131. 177 Kevin Giles, What on Earth Is the Church? (Wipf & Stock, 2005), 184. 178 Bradshaw, 138 (emphasis his). 179 Packer & Wright, 92; cf. Cundy, 23. 180 Bradshaw, 132. 181 Book of Common Prayer, 679: Article 19. 182 Bradshaw, 149-150. 183 Buchanan, 143. 184 Book of Common Prayer, 679: Article 20. 185 Bradshaw, 154. 186 Buchanan, 155: emphasis original. 187 Bradshaw, 143-144. 188 Book of Common Prayer, 679: Article 20. 189 Quoted in John S. Coolidge, The Pauline Renaisssance in England: Puritanism and the Bible (Clarendon, 1970), 8. 190 Bradshaw, 180. 191 Book of Common Prayer, 680: Article 25. 192 Buchanan, 239. See Ashley Null Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of Repentance:Renewing the Power to Love (Oxford, 2000) which treats this idea at length. 193 Buchanan, 183. 194 Book of Common Prayer, 412. 195 Bradshaw, 186. 196 The Church of England claims roughly 26million adherents, i.e. those citizens who have not formally registered an alternative membership. This represents roughly 50% of a total population around 53 million. 197 Buchanan, 246. 198 Christopher J. Cocksworth, Evangelical Eucharistic Thought in the Church of England (Cambridge, 1993), 221 argues that the service of Holy Communion has a sacrificial character, specifically that our "sacrifice of praise

109 and thanksgiving" and our oblation of "our selves, our souls and bodies" constitute a "sacrifice of participation" in the life of Christ. Cocksworth describes his position as "authentically evangelical and truly catholic" (xii) but he does not assert an Anglo-Catholic view that the rite entails participation in Christ's pleading his sacrifice before the throne of God. Overall Cocksworth sounds more evangelical than catholic. 199 For an Evangelical understanding of Anglo-Catholic eucharistic theology, see Bradshaw, 65-69. 200 Ibid.,193. 201 See anglicanmainstream.org "What We Believe." This statement was developed by the Church of England Evangelical Council, founded by John Stott in 1960. 202 This paper will focus on the presbyterate and the episcopate, as the diaconate has been of lesser interest to Anglican Evangelicals. 203 E.M.B. Green, "Mission and Ministry, " in Cundy, editor, 71. 204 John Stott, One People (Fleming H. Revell, 1982), 26; cf. 31. 205 Bradshaw, 158, 166. 206 Giles, 187. 207 Bradshaw, 161. 208 Roger Beckwith, Elders in Every City: The Origin and Role of the Ordained Ministry (Paternoster, 2003), 83-84. 209 Packer & Wright, 114. 210 Beckwith, 81 211 Stott, 50-51. 212 Cundy, editor, 73. 213 Bradshaw, 163. 214 Ibid., 159. For Jesus in His humanity as preeminently a prophet, see N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Fortress, 1996), chapter 5: "The Praxis of a Prophet." 215 Bradshaw, 165-166 citing the early 20th century Congregationalist theologian P.T. Forsyth. 216 E.M.B. Green, Freed to Serve (Hodder & Staughton, 1983), 37; quoted in Bradshaw, 161. 217 Buchanan, 262-263. 218 Ibid., 140-141. 219 Bradshaw, 167. 220 Cyril C. Richardson, editor, Early Christian Fathers (Macmillan, 1978), 63-64. 221 Ibid., 95. 222 Ibid., 371-372. 223 S.L. Greenslade, Early Latin Theology (Westminster, 1956), 126. 224 Buchanan, 323. 225 Book of Common Prayer, 622. 226 Buchanan, 260. 227 Ibid., 260-261. 228 Bradshaw, 175. 229 Buchanan, 261. 230 Book of Common Prayer, 679: Article 19.

110 The Ecclesiology of the Anglican High Church Tradition

Anglican High Church Ecclesiology: A Synopsis

The ecclesiology of the High Church tradition begins with a vision of the Church as a whole: it is a covenant people, a divine society, the body of Christ. Under any of those models, however, the implication is that it is organized; and, in particular, that some people hold authority. Under the Old Covenant, God ordered a priesthood in several degrees to guide his people and lead their worship. Likewise in the , Christ instituted the ministries of the twelve and the seventy to hold authority over his people in keeping his teaching and proclaiming the Gospel. In keeping with this emphasis on the corporate life of the Church, the High Church tradition has also upheld the authority of the Church, especially as a historic entity. This gives considerable weight to Church tradition as interpreting Scripture, though the emphasis given to any particular historical period has varied. High Church ecclesiology, therefore, has placed a good deal of emphasis on Church order, as supported by the ancient tradition of the Church. This shows itself particularly in three points.

(1) The Commission of Christ. Christ did not take authority upon himself, but received it from his Father (Heb. 5:4-5). So too, those who minister in the Church must receive authority from Christ. This idea has been embodied by the apostolic succession, which claims that Christ’s authority over the Church has been handed on through the Apostles to the bishops who came after them. While this idea has remained the same over the centuries, its application has varied. In the late 16thand early 17th centuries, it provided an argument for retaining the of the Church. However, from the late 17th century through the 19th century, it became increasingly a reminder to the Church of its original apostolic commission, against the secular pressures of the state and society. By the early 20th century, it would even stand as a criticism of denominational division in the Church.

(2) The Ministry of Christ. The authority of the ministry is not only received from Christ; it belongs to him. In John 20:21-22, Christ gives the apostles a gift of the Holy Spirit, which the Ordinal claims is given in ordination. This grace, given to the office of the ministry, entails that the acts of the minister have real spiritual effect; this office, in turn, is imparted as a spiritual mark, or ‘character,’ which can never be removed. Priestly acts, however, are not performed by the minister on his own behalf; rather they are done ‘in the person of Christ’ (in persona Christi), as the representative of Christ who is the primary agent in all the pastoral and sacramental acts of the ministry. This is seen particularly in the exercise of priestly absolution (2 Cor. 2:10).

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(3) The Priesthood of Christ. The notion of a eucharistic sacrifice or a ‘sacerdotal’ priesthood is not a necessary conclusion from these two principles. However, both have been widely held in the High Church tradition. In contrast to medieval notions of repeating Christ’s death, High Church writers emphasize a commemoration or representation of Christ’s sacrifice, in conjunction with the self-oblation of the Church. The accompanying model of the priesthood, however, can take two forms: either emphasizing the priest’s role as head of the congregation, expressing the priesthood of the Church; or else defining the priest as a sacramental minister, and a ‘channel’ of grace to the assembled body. In either model, however, this aspect of the priesthood is another instance of ministry in persona Christi, because Christ is both the head of the body and the source of all grace.

The Development of the High Church Tradition

The term ‘High Church,’ today, is often used with reference to liturgical style. Historically, however, it has referred to those who hold a ‘high’ doctrine of the Church and its ministry. This is the sense in which it is used here: the goal of this paper is to outline just what this ‘high’ view of the Church and the ordained ministry has been (and is) within Anglicanism. Before beginning this study, however, it is useful to have a historical perspective on the evolution of the movement. Strictly speaking, a ‘High Church’ party (so- called because it had ‘high’ views of the Church - including official doctrine and the sacraments) only emerged in the Church of England with the restoration of the monarchy in the 1660s following the English Civil War, because only after the Civil War did there emerge a ‘’ party to make such a distinction meaningful. But, though earlier writers therefore did not belong to a ‘High Church’ party in the later sense, the theological roots of this tradition were planted much earlier, in the Reformation itself.

To Henry VIII, matters of religion were determined by a mixture of his own personal , and the diplomatic pressures of the moment - is assertion of the royal supremacy against the jurisdiction of the pope often requiring alliances with more definitely Protestant princes in Germany. The conflict between these two pressures produced a complicated and unstable dynamic at court, the end result of which, however, was that at the accession of his son Edward VI reformers were poised to make their move. Edward died young, however, and these initial moves towards reformation proved abortive. Edward’s sister Mary also died after only a few years on the throne, however, and it was with their sister Elizabeth I that an English Reformation truly began to take hold.

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Elizabethan religious politics, however, saw the nation divided between a pro-Roman faction looking to end the royal supremacy and restore ecclesiastical jurisdiction to the Pope, a radical reforming faction which drew on foreign influences for their inspiration (courtesy, in many cases, of exile abroad during Mary’s reign), and a conservative faction stuck uncomfortably in between, neither attached to Rome, nor comfortable with radical reform. The Elizabethan settlement would have pleased neither of the extreme factions, but it apparently fit well enough with the middle group to hold - a general flavor of the compromise can be seen in the 1559 Prayer Book, which is moderately Reformed in theology but requires vestments as they were worn in the second year of her brother Edward - which is to say, before any liturgical changes took hold. In any case, by the end of Elizabeth’s reign Roman Catholic recusancy had faded or gone underground, and the main tension was now between ‘conformists’ to the system established by the Elizabethan Settlement and an emerging Puritan party engaged in varying degrees of ‘nonconformity.’

The Elizabethan period is, of necessity, a formative era for the later High Church tradition, as it was the Elizabethan Church which established the Prayer Book tradition and produced the Thirty-nine Articles - both important sources of authority for the High Churchmen. It is also in this period, however, that the conforming party began to produce its own voices. John Jewell, in the earlier part of Elizabeth’s reign, was a leading voice in English polemics against Rome; his protégé, Richard Hooker, took up the cause of the conformists against nonconformity in the later years of the queen’s reign, in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. The Laws were published beginning in 1594, and have proven influential not just amongst High Churchmen, but in all major strands of historic Anglicanism. A few years before that, however, another name began to rise in prominence. had been appointed as a chaplain to the Queen in 1590, though his opposition to the Queen’s handling of Church revenues for a time prevented further advancement.

Elizabeth died in 1603 and was succeeded by her cousin, James VI Stuart of Scotland, better known as James I of England. Though Scotland was Presbyterian, James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and resented the treatment his mother had received at the hands of the Scottish Presbyterians. As a result, he strongly favored the conforming party in England. Andrewes in particular received considerable preferment under James’ royal patronage. James was succeeded by his son, Charles I, in 1625. Charles was an inept ruler who spent much of his reign at odds with Parliament. In ecclesiastical matters, however, he continued his father’s support of the conforming party. Indeed, he gave almost complete deference to the wishes of his Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. Laud was an idealist and a disciplinarian, who had little patience for the worldliness and irreverence which had (in his eyes) intruded itself on the worship of God - such things as the being treated as commonplace when not used for the sacrament, or wealthy patrons building monuments to themselves at the focal point of the sanctuary. As a

113 result, he set forth a series of liturgical reforms aimed at a more decorous observance of the liturgy. These changes proved to be controversial, however, and although Laud himself was a fair and merciful man, the libels against him were civil (not ecclesiastical) offenses, and his libellers received harsh punishments from the King’s Star Chamber court, making Laud one of the most hated enemies of the extreme nonconformists.

One of Charles’ projects was to bring religious conformity to his two realms, by imposing English-style episcopacy and liturgy on the Scottish church; Laud himself naturally took a leading part in these plans. They backfired, however, sending the Scots into revolt; but Charles’ relationship with Parliament had by this time entirely collapsed. Attempts to reclaim his northern realm without Parliamentary support failed, however, and so in 1640 he gave way to the so-called ‘.’ Laud was quickly accused of treason, from 1641 was imprisoned in the , and in 1645 was beheaded. From 1642 to 1649 Charles found himself at war with his own Parliament, in a dispute with definite religious dimensions: a leading goal of nonconformity since Elizabeth’s reign had been the removal of the episcopate, and the radical Puritans now taking the lead in Parliament were poised to remove it ‘root and branch’ from the English Church. As Charles’s queen was a French Roman Catholic, the royalist coalition therefore consisted of episcopalians and Roman Catholics, opposed to a Parliamentary coalition made up of diverse sorts of nonconforming Protestants. Charles himself was executed on the orders of Oliver Cromwell in 1649. However, the Parliamentary coalition was itself unstable and collapsed under the divisions of religious infighting; Cromwell ruled as dictator with the title of Lord Protector from 1653. Whereas Parliament had favored , under Cromwell a wide range of Protestantism was tolerated, so long as there was no episcopacy and no Prayer Book.

With Cromwell’s death in 1660, however, Parliament found itself with no other choice than to turn to Charles’ exiled heir, Charles II. The younger Charles, however, had been tutored by ardent episcopalian clergy during his exile in France, and insisted on restoring the episcopate and the Prayer Book upon his return to England. The son of a Roman Catholic mother, however, he (like his brother James) sought religious toleration for their mother’s coreligionists; and sought to pave the way for this with more tolerant policies towards nonconforming protestants. The returning exiles, however, were in no mood for toleration: alterations were made to the ordination rite to exclude the possibility of a presbyterian interpretation, and despite opposition from the King and his government, a series of penal laws were passed imposing severe penalties on nonconformity. The result was that nonconforming Protestants officially separated from the Church of England, forming their own distinct denominations.

The Church of England had, at last, achieved a cohesive identity - ‘Anglicanism’ - though at the cost of Christian unity. Even within this cohesion, however, there were disagreements. On the one hand, there were the returning bishops and their supporters, who held fast to the positions to the Anglican order and the interpretation given to it by the

114 Laudians; on the other were those who, in the aftermath of the civil wars, were tired of dogmatism and sought a more reasoned approach to religion, supporting the King’s quest for greater religious toleration. Out of this divide would emerge the ‘orthodox’ (High Church) and ‘latitudinarian’ (Low Church) parties in the Church.

When James II succeeded his brother in 1685, the royal quest for religious toleration reached a new intensity. Charles II had converted to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed; his younger brother was already Roman Catholic. James immediately began to push for greater religious toleration, reaching a climax with his Declaration of Indulgence in 1687, which used royal authority to annul the civil penalties against Roman Catholics and nonconforming Protestants. In April 1688, the Declaration was re-issued, with orders that it be read aloud in the churches. To high churchmen (which most of the bishops still were) the bodies the king wished to tolerate were in schism from the Church - the Church of England being, in their view, the Catholic Church in England-and to read the Declaration in church was unacceptable. petitioned the king in opposition to these policies, and were subsequently imprisoned in the Tower of London on charges of seditious libel. When, in June, the Queen gave birth to a (Roman Catholic) heir, Protestant nobles invited Prince William III of Orange - the husband of James’ daughter Mary, and himself the grandson of Charles I - to defend the Protestant faith in England. William landed in England with his army on November 5; James fled the country, and William, with his wife Mary were recognized as rulers of England.

For high churchmen, this posed another problem: they believed that royal authority was held by divine right, and it was James who had been anointed King of England, not William. William was willing to accommodate clerics with these views by requiring their loyalty to him as only as king in fact, not by right; but with James having neither abdicated nor died, for some this was still too much. Nine bishops - including five of those imprisoned by James, one of whom was the Archbishop of Canterbury - and numerous other clergy refused to swear the oath of loyalty to the monarch which had been required since of Henry VIII. The King deprived the bishops of their sees, but many of the lower clergy were supported by sympathetic patrons and refused to recognize the removal of a bishop by the secular authority, or the jurisdiction of the new bishops put in their places. This division in the Church, known as the Nonjuring Schism (a‘nonjuror’ being a cleric who refused the oath of loyalty) continued well into the 18th century.

William III, as a Dutch Calvinist, was keen to defend Protestantism, but was not particularly attached to the Anglican system. In Scotland, he disestablished the unpopular Episcopal Church established by Charles I in favor of Presbyterianism; the remaining Scottish episcopalians joined with the nonjurors. At court, the (who favored royal prerogative - and therefore also preferred uncomplicated lines of succession) were suspected of disloyalty to William and Mary, and with them the high churchmen were also out of favor,

115 being suspected of closeted loyalties to James. This changed in the reign of Queen Anne (1702-1714), who had been raised in the Anglicanism of the Caroline period; but under her successors George I (1714-1727) and George II (1727-1760), the political tide was once more against the ‘orthodox’ party. George I, the elector of Hanover in Germany, was 58th in line to the throne; but the first 57 were Roman Catholics of the Stuart family, and thus - since the reign of William and Mary - prohibited from succeeding to the throne in the Protestant United Kingdom.1 This distance from any sort of normal royal succession made the early Hanoverians’ situation even more precarious than that of William III, with several rebellions and invasion attempts by ‘Jacobite’ forces loyal to the more immediate successors of James II occurring from 1715 to 1745. Given links to the Jacobites, the Whigs (who favored parliamentary authority over notions of divine right) were in favor at court, and with them the Latitudinarian party in the Church. Despite the resulting lack of ecclesiastical preferment, however, the ‘orthodox’ party remained strong among the lower clergy; in 1717, the Convocation of the Church of England was suspended due to the persistent opposition of ‘orthodox’ churchmen in the lower house to the low-church views of the infamous Latitudinarian, Bishop .

Under George III (1760-1820), however, the ‘orthodox’ found themselves once more in favor. Several factors contributed to this change. First, the last serious Jacobite threat had been defeated at the Battle of Culloden in 1745. Second, the revolutions and wars during his reign spurred a tide of nationalism which pushed the Tory party - with its ties to high churchmanship - into political power; particularly important in this respect was the official atheism of the French Revolution, the ‘reign of terror’ and the subsequent rise of Napoleon Bonaparte serving as case-studies in the consequences of unorthodox belief. Perhaps most important of all, however, was George himself, who - unlike his German- speaking Lutheran predecessors - was raised in England, and firmly committed to promoting Anglican orthodoxy. By the end of George’s reign, the government was firmly in Tory hands, and almost all higher offices in the Church were held by high churchmen. This High Church dominance of the early 19th century was closely connected with an informal network of personal connections, both ecclesiastical and political, known as the ‘Hackney Phalanx,’ which kept the government supplied with a well-vetted list of orthodox appointees for positions in the Church and in the universities.

The horrors of the French Revolution cast a long shadow, however. The Industrial Revolution had created new cities almost out of thin air, and with the Church of England slow to adapt, non-Anglican Evangelicalism rushed to fill the void. Simultaneously, large waves of Irish Roman Catholics began immigrating to the new cities. The rapid growth of these non-Anglican denominations, coupled with the threat of civil war in Ireland, brought with it pressure to relieve the political disabilities against non-Anglicans that had been in place since the 17th century. This was achieved in 1828-29; shortly thereafter, the Tory party collapsed to infighting between moderate and radical factions. Political power swung to a coalition of Whigs, Roman Catholics, and Evangelicals who were determined to reform both

116 Parliament and the Church. By 1832, bishops were being physically assaulted in the streets, and high churchmen were convinced that the entire Anglican system was under attack. Their worst fears seemed to be confirmed when, in 1833, Parliament dissolved twelve dioceses of the (Anglican) . Parliament’s aim was to ‘streamline’ the Church, making it less top-heavy and redistributing funds where the Church of Ireland actually had parishioners; but to high churchmen it appeared as the opening move in an all-out assault by a secular authority against the prerogatives of the Church.

High Church outrage found a voice in July of that year, when the famous religious poet John Keble, preaching the annual sermon before the Judges of the Assize Court, accused Parliament of ‘National Apostasy.’ Shortly thereafter, his younger friend , began publishing a series of ‘’ intended to galvanize high church resolve and spread high church principles. The ‘Tracts’ quickly acquired a following, known as the ‘Tractarians’ or collectively as the ‘,’ as its center was at the University of Oxford. Although the Tracts began innocuously enough - and even had a measure of Evangelical support for their opposition to secularism - the movement quickly headed into troubled water. Newman, in particular, deliberately courted controversy as a means of cementing party identity. In 1835-36, the Tractarians spearheaded a bruising opposition to the appointment of Divinity Professor R.D. Hampden because of his dismissive view of the Creeds; at roughly the same time, - a latecomer to the movement - published a substantial tract on Baptism that Evangelicals saw as a threat to their views on conversion. In 1838, Newman and Keble published the personal papers of their deceased friend R.H. Froude, which contained in unedited form a highly romanticized affection for the Medieval Church, and a correspondingly vehement dislike of the Reformation, which did not sit well with readers of strong Protestant persuasions. By the early 1840s, an overtly pro-Roman faction had emerged among the younger Tractarians; Newman’s attempt to keep them within the Church of England, in Tract 90 (1841), produced an immense backlash. This led to the end of the series, Newman’s withdrawal from ministry (1843), and finally the conversion of the radicals to Roman Catholicism, shortly followed by Newman (1845).

Apart from the shock to his friends, however, Newman’s departure did not greatly affect the Movement. Pusey—who felt the wrath of the anti-Tractarian storm himself with a two-year suspension from preaching imposed by the University in 1843 - reluctantly took Newman’s place as a figurehead, and continued to shepherd the Movement, leading the way with the reestablishment of religious communities and a resurgence in the practice of private confession and eucharistic devotion. The Movement, however, produced a divergence within High Churchmanship. There were, in fact, High Church precedents for many of the novelties introduced by the Tractarians; but this in itself shows the divergence between the ‘old’ High Church party and the Oxford Movement: the ‘old’ party allowed for theoretical possibilities, the Tractarians put it into practice; the Tractarians thought the older school was ‘cold,’ the ‘old’ High Churchmen thought the Tractarians were rash. These tensions showed

117 themselves often enough; but at the same time (extremes in both excepted), the two strains of high churchmanship were close enough to allow for cooperation in controversies against the Evangelical and parties.

The ‘old’ High Church tradition continued on for some time. By the mid-1830s, Bishop C. J. Blomfield of London had taken the lead in matters of Church reform, ensuring both that the Church adapted to the needs of the new era and that its historic character would be preserved. The ‘old’ school was not free from controversy, however. In 1848, the , , blocked the institution of Charles Gorham to a church in his diocese, on the grounds that he denied the Prayer Book doctrine of Baptism; Gorham appealed the decision, and when the lower courts upheld Phillpotts’ ruling, continued to appeal until the case came, in 1850, before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, where Phillpotts’ ruling was overturned. Once again, a secular authority had ruled in Church matters - and indeed, had overruled a bishop who was upholding the Church’s teaching - leading to an outcry. Another exodus of high church clergy departed for Rome. This would be the last major conflict of the ‘old’ school of High Churchmanship, though its influence would continue to be seen through the end of the century.

On the Tractarian side, the 1850s and 60s saw several controversies over eucharistic doctrine, in which Pusey’s carefully formulated expression of belief in the real presence of Christ ‘under the form of bread and wine’ was vindicated. Increasingly, however, controversies were not over doctrine but ritual - the older generations of Tractarians had been concerned with teaching and inward disposition; but the younger generations thought that part of catechesis should be to teach doctrines visually through the use of vestments and ritual acts, a movement known as ‘ritualism.’ This led to charges of Romanism, but the bulk of their activities, with minor exceptions, were usually upheld as consistent with the rubrics of the Prayer Book. This did not satisfy their opponents, however, and in 1874 Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, with the support of , passed the Public Worship Regulation Act, outlawing ritual practices in the Church of England. This made the prosecutions a matter of civil rather than ecclesiastical law, and in keeping with High Church principles most ritualists refused to recognize the jurisdiction of a secular authority over the conduct of the liturgy, simply ignoring the Act as well as any charges brought against them. As a result, several were jailed for contempt of court, and on at least one occasion the vicar’s wife and children were turned out of their home onto the street. These prosecutions gradually turned the public in favor of toleration, and by 1888, when charges were brought against Edward King, bishop of Lincoln, the trial was conducted instead before a specially convened court of bishops (King was forbidden from mixing water in the chalice during the service, and from using the sign of the cross in giving the blessing or absolution, but was acquitted on all other counts, though it was required that all manual acts should be visible to the congregation). Meanwhile, the ritualists, who rejected clerical careerism and often sought out slum parishes, were gradually winning the hearts of their parishioners through hard- working pastoral care - ‘Father’ earned his title carrying children in his arms

118 to the hospital during a cholera epidemic. By 1906, a Church commission formally recommended the toleration of ritualism, and in 1963 the Public Worship Regulation Act was finally repealed.

Until his death in 1882, Pusey had generally held the ritualists to a moderate Tractarian theology not too far distant from the old High Church tradition. However, the seeds were already planted for the movement, which was coming to be known as ‘Anglo- Catholicism,’ to diverge from this heritage.2 First, the introduction of new practices such as the religious life and regular private confession meant that guidance had to be drawn from somewhere, and the nearest source was Roman Catholicism. While Pusey was always careful to learn what he could while remaining sensitive to the differences between Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism, others borrowed less carefully. Second, a part of the impulse to ritualism had been formed by the romantic appeal of the past, and such romanticism can easily find itself drawn to other traditions where the ‘past’ seems to live on more fully than in one’s own—in this case, either Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. Both of these tendencies have been affected by the ecumenical movement of the 20th century, which has sought to emphasize the commonalities between Christian traditions rather than their differences, and which has resulted in an easier exchange of thoughts and practices across traditions.

Finally, there is the issue of biblical criticism. For the Tractarians, as for the ‘old’ High Churchmen, Scripture was the primary authority, read through the lens of tradition (the Tractarians emphasizing patristic tradition, the ‘old’ school emphasizing the more recent traditions of the Reformation, though both read extensively in all periods of theology). The result of such a view was the rejection of higher criticism—then in its youthful and most destructive days - as irreverent to Scripture and overturning the doctrine of the Church. By the end of the 19th century, however, higher criticism was gaining ground and could not be dismissed. In response, a group of third-generation Tractarians associated with the publication of the volume Lux Mundi (1889) argued that there were grounds for accepting such criticism, at least in the Old Testament. All truth is God’s truth; and in particular if God worked through people, engaging with the history of revelation ought to be fruitful. And finally (and most controversially), if some findings of higher criticism contradicted Jesus’ own treatment of the Old Testament, the doctrine of the Incarnation might allow that, for Jesus to be ‘fully human’ as the Chalcedonian definition demanded, there might be some limitations in Jesus’ human knowledge (Luke 2:40 served as a proof-text for this discussion). In the end, however, higher criticism could not be admitted in the Old Testament without also admitting it in the New; and through much of the earlier 20th century its tendency (as it had been in the 19th) was to fragment the Scriptures. In the face of this destructive influence, the inherited value given to tradition changed from its original interpretive role, becoming an authority in its own right - whereas Lux Mundi dealt with the topic of Scripture in ‘The Holy Spirit and Inspiration,’ the 1926 volume Essays Catholic and Critical, for instance, did not have an essay on Scripture, but did include ‘The Spirit and the Church in History.’ This could go

119 two ways, however: new, less fragmenting, approaches to higher criticism emerged later in the century, and for some, ‘the Spirit in the Church’ served to preserve the faith until the academic study of Scripture no longer posed problems for orthodoxy and tradition could resume its interpretive role; but for others, ‘the Spirit in the Church’ became not just the guarantor but the definition of orthodoxy, with Scripture simply a single point within that history.

The result of these two dynamics, with regard to and Scripture, is that ‘Anglo-Catholicism’ is now, in fact, a large spectrum of positions, whether ‘Prayer Book Catholic,’ ‘Anglo-Papist,’ or ‘Anglo-Orthodox’ on one axis; and from ‘traditional’ to ‘affirming’ with regard to issues such as the ordination of women and human sexuality. It is not possible with regard to contemporary views to cover the whole range of positions that might be presented. However, the earlier centuries of high churchmanship do present a more cohesive line of development, and it is possible, in the 20th century, to draw on a few major figures that are in dialog with this earlier tradition.

Before proceeding with the main task of this paper, its limitations should be noted. A roughly four-hundred-year history of a tradition’s views on the Church and the ministry, when that tradition is ‘high church,’ is bound to produce a wealth of sources - more, in this case, than the constraints of this project would allow. It is believed that the sources which are presented here do put forth a comprehensive picture of the tradition. Nonetheless, there are a number of important sources not included. Among those omitted, it is worth mentioning the names of , Daniel Brevint, and in the earlier periods, and in the 20th century the volume, The Apostolic Ministry, edited by .

In addition, this survey has focused exclusively on English theology. This is only natural given the role the Church of England’s history has had in influencing the rest of the Anglican tradition globally. Given our own context in North America, however, it is worth noting several points with regard to the High Church tradition in America. The American colonies were the laboratory for the later Stuart projects of religious toleration, and therefore were much more religiously pluralistic than England. New England in particular was the destination for religious dissidents from the Stuart Church of England. Nonetheless, in the southern colonies, the Church of England gradually came to be established. In these areas, a more Latitudinarian position was generally held; however, in New England (and to a lesser extent in the Middle Colonies) where Anglicans had to compete with other denominations for existence, a more High Church tradition flourished. A principle source in forming this tradition was a catechism written for the colonies in the early 18th century by Thomas Bray, the founder of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (Anglicanism’s first missionary society), which reflected a theological perspective which had much in common with the Non-Jurors. This tradition remained strong up through the period of the American Revolution. The war, however, proved particularly difficult for High Churchmen, with their loyalty to the King (and, often as not, reliance on missionary support from Britain); many

120 either returned to England or emigrated to Canada. Nonetheless, some High Churchmen remained, and indeed flourished: Samuel Seabury and John Henry Hobart both wrote on the doctrine of the Church as vigorous representatives of the pre-Tractarian High Church tradition; Hobart, in particular, transformed the American understanding of the episcopate from an emphasis on presiding over Church meetings to a focus on missionary activity. Towards the end of the 19th century and into the 20th, Charles Grafton serves as an American representative of the Tractarian position.

Order and Authority

As was noted above, the High Church tradition places a strong emphasis on the doctrine of the Church - specifically, the visible Church, as the invisible is known only to God.3 It is therefore in this context that its discussion of the ministry and of Holy Order more generally takes place. The visible Church is a society, and a society must be organized in some fashion. Order is therefore necessary; and in particular, the High Church tradition has sought to uphold the threefold order of the Church’s ministry.4 There have however been two approaches to this particular end.

The pattern followed through much of the seventeenth century emphasised the divine ordering of the Old Covenant as a pattern for the Church under the New Covenant: 5 God may have revealed himself in two testaments, but he has one Church throughout all. The ministry of the Old Covenant is not only a type fulfilled in Christ, but a pattern to be continued in his Church.6 This pattern, in the New Testament, was instituted by Christ in seminal form: first in Christ himself, then by extension to the twelve and the seventy, and thence developing over time by God’s design into a full-fledged hierarchy encompassing not only the three-fold order, but also Archbishops, Archdeacons, and each particular office down to the parish sexton - all of which were presented as parallel to offices in the temple hierarchy of the Old Testament.7 England, indeed, was understood as an ‘Israel of God;’ divine authority was granted to the monarch as derived from Moses and the anointed kings of Israel, and clergy legitimately held civil power, just as the familial patriarchs (succeeded by the Apostles and thence by the bishops) held intertwined civil and religious roles.8

A more general approach, however, was sketched by Richard Hooker at the end of the sixteenth century, which proved to be the more lasting form of argument. For Hooker, the visible church, as a society, must have a polity - ‘a form of ordering the public spiritual affairs of the Church of God’ - by which it may be known.9 This broad definition includes matters of Church governance. The patterns of the Old Testament, rather than providing an exact template, provide a principle of hierarchical governance: many diverse elements make up the life of God’s people, and ‘where so great variety is, if there should be equality, confusion would follow.’ Thus the hierarchy of the Old Covenant has been paralleled in the ministry of the New.10 121 It is between these two positions, however, that the later High Church tradition formed its discussion. Jones of Nayland follows Hooker in emphasizing the general requirement of order in societies; but follows the 17th century tradition in drawing parallels between the twelve patriarchs and twelve apostles, and between the hierarchy of high priest, priest and Levite and that of bishop, priest and deacon - though he does not draw out the parallels between Old and New Testament order in such a way as to make every office of the Church of England a matter of divine decree.11 Jones therefore marks a retreat from the most rigorous appeal to Old Testament order, which only accelerated in the following century with the advent of higher criticism and its effect in severing the two Testaments.

This retreat, however, did not mean giving up a structured understanding of the Church as a visible organization. Rather, it was a withdrawal from one particular way of articulating the Church’s structure, to the more general grounds articulated by Hooker. So, by the end of the 19th century, one finds the Liberal Catholic school expanding on Hooker’s approach. If ‘Christianity claims to be at once a life, a truth, and a worship,’ the Church must therefore be a visible body, because living, teaching, and worshiping are all inherently social activities; likewise, only a visible Church can evangelize, show compassion, or ‘represent the Incarnate Lord.’12 The society of the Church, however, is not only visible but organized: Jesus carefully selected his disciples, instituted social ceremonies as sacraments, and himself holds the role of king in the ‘kingdom of heaven.’13 This is underscored by the Pauline language of the Church as a ‘body’ in his first letter to the Corinthians - a body is inherently both visible and organized.14 This organization or order entails the existence of distinct ministries, and indeed a distinct ministerial office, grounded in the ministry of the Apostles.15 This emphasis on order, however, is not to be understood as setting the visible nature of the Church against its spiritual reality. ‘An ideally spiritual man is not a man without a body; but a man whose whole bodily life is a perfect expression of spirit.’ Order is therefore the expression, not the antithesis, of the Church’s spiritual life.16 This more general appeal to the nature of the Church as a visible society - including its inherent order and the outward expression of its inward life by the orders of ministry - continued, in one form or another, to be characteristic of Anglo-Catholic ecclesiology through the twentieth century.

122 The Commission of Christ: the Doctrine of Apostolic Succession

As this introductory discussion has shown, the High Church tradition has emphasized the visible and ordered nature of the Church. But what is its order, and how is it to be understood? Within this tradition, these questions have been answered by appeal to the doctrine of the apostolic succession - the idea that authority in the Church has descended from Christ through the apostles to the bishops of the Church. (The apostolic succession is, of course, not only a doctrine but a historical claim that this transference of authority occurred.). The present section, therefore, will discuss the details of this doctrine, as well as its historical functions and the problem posed by non-episcopal churches.

The Principle of Succession

The definition of the apostolic succession just given - the descent of authority from Christ, through the apostles, to the bishops - may answer the question, ‘What is the apostolic succession?’ But in turn, it poses three more questions which must be answered for a full understanding of this definition. Why must there be authority in the Church, and why must it be expressed in a particular office? The bishops are said to be the recipients and conveyors of authority - what, precisely, is their role? And finally, why must there be a ‘succession’ to convey this authority?

Succession and Sacramental Authority

The apostolic succession is the transmission of Christ’s authority in the Church; this ministerial commission grants the authority to teach, to preach, and to exercise pastoral discipline. Above all, however, it has been associated with the authority to administer the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. This leads us to our first questions with regard to defining the doctrine of the apostolic succession: why is such an authorized office necessary? And how does it relate to the wider body of the Church?

Throughout much of the older tradition, the analogy to the Old Testament priesthood plays a strong role in shaping the way this topic is addressed. There are, however, two different aspects of the priesthood to draw on. The most obvious is their ritual function: Cosin, for instance, notes that presbyters are called ‘priests’ ‘by analogy and allusion’ to the Levitical priesthood, in the same way as there are parallels between the Passover and the Eucharist (1 Cor. 5:7-8), and between the altar and the Communion table (Heb. 13:10). It is in this context that he observes, ‘the sacrament of the Eucharist is reserved for the priest, no other minister of an inferior order having any commission or power given him to meddle

123 17 either in consecrating the elements or absolving the penitents that come to receive them.’ Johnson draws out the point more clearly: one element in a proper sacrifice is a ‘proper officer.’ In the New Covenant, the rite analogous to sacrifice is the celebration of the Eucharist.18 For Leslie, on the other hand, the role of the priest as an officer of the covenant is to ‘sign and seal’ covenants in God’s name, which requires that the priest be empowered by a sort of divine ‘power of attorney.’19

A direct analogy to the Old Testament, however, is not necessary to a discussion of sacramental authority. Even without it, the theme of an authorized ministry remains. Keble argues that ‘the Holy Feast on our Saviour’s sacrifice … was intended by Him to be constantly conveyed through the hands of commissioned persons. Except therefore we can show such warrant, we cannot be sure that our hands convey the sacrifice.’ Adhering to the authorized ministry is therefore ‘the safest course.’20 Likewise, at the end of the 19th century, Staley portrays the clergy as ‘ministers of state’ in the Kingdom of Heaven. Just as ‘[a] sovereign sums up in himself all the lower offices of the State,’ so too ‘[o]ur blessed Lord is the fountain-head of the Christian ministry.’21 By delegation from him, the apostles, and after them the bishops, ‘sum up all the offices of the Christian ministry.’22 Thus, ‘[i]n the episcopate lies the germ of the three orders of ministry - bishops, priests, and deacons,’ yet this authority, which resides as a whole in the bishops, is delegated in part to other ministers, according to their order.23

The natural outcome of the Staley’s view is to emphasize the mediating role of the clergy: ‘[t]he streams of grace flow through the sacraments,’ which ‘can be duly celebrated only by those who have been authorized by Christ,’ and so ‘the means of grace depend upon a lawful ministry’ - especially, given its central role, that of the episcopate.24 This view has not gone uncontested, however. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Liberal Catholic school brought in a more corporate understanding of the Church, which portrays a different relationship between the Church and the clergy. For Moberly, ‘[i]f the Body is not some, but all; and the powers and gifts inherent in the life of the Body are the powers and gifts which, so far, belong to all; and the Spirit which is the Body’s life, is the Spirit of all;’ then ‘ministers specifically ordained’ ‘are not intermediaries between the Body and its life. They … are organs of the Body, through which the life, inherent in the total Body, expresses itself in particular functions of detail.’25 The sacraments are indeed still means of grace - but they are the activity of the whole body, performed by ministerial ‘organs,’ not something delivered to the passive body by an intermediate ministry.

The reason, then, for a particular sacramental office granted authority by means of the apostolic succession, is tied to the nature of God’s saving work in the world. God’s acts are not random; nor is his grace dispensed arbitrarily. Rather, he has promised his people salvation and all that goes with it; and this promise is bound to his covenant. God’s covenant, however, brings with it certain patterns of life; it focuses on certain rites as covenantal signs and actions. These central acts, however, are done on God’s behalf - and

124 so, whether they are described in religious, legal, or corporate language, those who perform them must be particularly authorized by God to do them. The value of the older, more hierarchical approach to ministerial authority lies in making this point. The corporate vision of Moberly and the Liberal Catholics has great strength in presenting the ministry as a sign to the body of its own nature, and in encouraging the active participation of the whole body in worship. But while such emphases may be more fashionable than the hierarchical authoritarianism of the older school, it is also worth being reminded in our egalitarian age that God’s gifts - like his authority - come to us from above.

The Authority of the Episcopate

The particular vision put forth by the High Church understanding of the apostolic succession, however, is not merely one which sets forth a ministerial office, but one which emphasizes the higher authority of bishops within an unequal ordering of the Church’s ministry. The resulting question of how to define the episcopate is best understood by discussing the office of bishop in relation to the other orders of ministry in the Church, particularly the presbyterate. (The diaconate is not much discussed in the material surveyed; for a brief overview, see pg ). Bishops and presbyters both share a ministry of sacramental administration and pastoral authority in the Church; indeed, in the New Testament the terms ‘bishop’ and ‘presbyter’ are frequently used to refer to the same people. On what grounds, then, are they to be distinguished?

Hooker’s analysis begins with the apparently synonymous usage of ‘bishop’ and ‘presbyter’ in the New Testament. The particular role of the presbyter is in governing the Church. However, the presbyterate is divided according to the hierarchical principle seen in the Old Testament priesthood. Some presbyters are ‘greater some less in power,… the greater they which received fullness of spiritual power, the less they to whom less was granted.’ This is ‘by our Saviour’s own appointment,’ as seen in the appointment of the seventy as ‘inferior presbyters,’ though they shared with the Apostles the same ‘commission to preach and baptize.’26 The ‘superiority’ of the higher order of presbyters - that is, of bishops - pertains to both faculties and jurisdiction, as shown respectively in the bishop’s ‘power to ordain ecclesiastical persons,’ as well as their ‘power chiefly in government over Presbyters as well as Laymen, a power to be by way of jurisdiction a Pastor even unto Pastors themselves.’ From very early on in the life of the Church, these powers have been reserved to the bishops. There is, however, no requirement of a particular local jurisdiction inherent to either degree of presbyters, both of may be ‘either at large or else with [geographic] restraint.’27

The distinction between the twelve and the seventy used by Hooker is paradigmatic in the wider High Church tradition. A very similar analysis was given both by Andrewes and Laud, although they diverge from Hooker in maintaining that the orders of bishops and presbyters (in the developed sense of the terms) are not only on the pattern established by Christ, but are in direct succession to the offices established by Christ, and so may be said to

125 have been instituted by Christ himself.28 In the 19th century, however, Palmer developed Hooker’s notion of superior and inferior presbyters by distinguishing between degree and nature with regard to the ministry. By degree, there are three orders of ministry: bishops, priests, and deacons. By nature, however, there are only two: the pastoral and sacramental ministry of bishops and priests, as opposed to that of deacons, which are ‘of a temporal, or at least, a very inferior character.’ Bishops and priests ‘are ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God;’ are ‘invested with the care of souls and the government of the church, in different degrees;’ and are ‘sent to teach and preach the gospel of Christ, to make disciples by baptism, to celebrate the Eucharist, to bless the congregation, to offer prayers and spiritual sacrifices in the presence of all the people, even to seal with the Holy Spirit in confirmation.’29 The nature, therefore, of their ministries is a shared pastoral and sacramental authority which Hooker had referred to as presbyteral, though they hold it in different degrees.

The appeal to the distinction of office between the twelve and the seventy, however, raises another question. Bishops are successors to the twelve apostles; yet few would say that they hold an identical office. In what sense, then, have they succeeded the apostles? The answer to this question has been to draw a distinction between what the Convocation Book of 1606 describes as the ‘essential and perpetual’ aspects of the apostles’ ministry and their ‘personal and temporary’ gifts, or what Christopher Wordsworth in the 1840s described as their ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ offices.30 So Hooker distinguishes between the Apostles’ ‘power to sit as spiritual ordinary judges, both over laity and over clergy,’ by virtue of which they served as the first bishops ‘at large,’ and their ‘peculiar charge’ as eyewitnesses of Christ charged with establishing the Church.31 Andrewes notes in similar fashion, that others besides the Apostles had been with Christ in his earthly ministry, had been sent out by him, had founded churches or performed miracles or even written books of the New Testament - but only the apostles, and bishops after them, had authority to lay on hands for ordination and confirmation (Acts 6:6, 8:17-18), to command and to exercise discipline within the Church (Andrewes’ citations here are too numerous to record); as well as power of ‘countermanding’ - regulating or restraining - the ministry of others (Luke 9:49, Acts 15:24, 1 Tim. 2:12). ‘In this power it is,’ Andrewes holds, ‘that the bishops succeeded the apostles.’32 Likewise in the 1830s, Tract 24 emphasizes that the Apostles were both the highest authority over, and the source of unity for, the congregations under their care; Wordsworth comes a decade later; and again at the end of the century, divides the role of the Apostles into two parts: their temporary office as the original witnesses to the resurrection and in ‘making the original proclamation of the Gospel;’ and the ‘perpetual’ office of ‘a pastorate of souls, a stewardship of divine mysteries’ - the first, unique to them, the second continued on in the subsequent office of bishops.33

The period from the 1590s up to about 1900, therefore, shows a consensus in distinguishing between the ‘essential’ or ‘ordinary’ office of the apostles, in which they were succeeded by the episcopate, and their ‘personal’ or ‘extraordinary’ office, which was unique

126 to their ministry in the decades following the Ascension. The 20th century, however, brought new perspectives to the discussion by widening it from a debate about the nature of the episcopate in itself, to a question of its role in the wider life of the Church. So, though polemics can often fall into a caricatured divide between ‘institutionalist’ and ‘individualist’ models of the Church, Ramsey rejects this dichotomy: it is not a question of the Church versus the Gospel, but of what the Church (and especially Church order) says about the Gospel.34 The Gospel is the message of the death and for the sake of his Church; the Church is the place where ‘men may by a veritable death find a life whose center is in Christ and in the brethren.’35 This is achieved by a participation in the Church as the body of Christ; but this is only possible because the Church was (actually, historically) founded by Jesus, and serves as a link to his (actual, historical) death and resurrection. This historicity is reflected in the apostolic - and episcopal - office, which by its historical continuity points the Christian ‘away from what is partial or subjective, to Jesus in the flesh, and to the one universal Church.’36

In contrast to Ramsey’s emphasis on the Church’s historical continuity, however, Mascall emphasizes the Church’s eschatological reality. This shapes several aspects of his understanding of Holy Orders, which will be discussed later; with regard to the relationship between the Apostles and the historic episcopate, however, the effect is to erase any distinction. As the tradition from Andrewes to Gore had noted, however, this distinction is a matter of historical context; but when stepping outside of history, such distinctions vanish. The theological significance of the Apostles in the New Testament as establishing the structure of the Church is transferred directly to the episcopate; and the distinguishing feature of the Apostles (historically), as eyewitnesses to the Resurrection, is directly analogous to the bishop’s role as a ‘guardian of the apostolic tradition.’37

The tendency therefore in the 20th century has been to push past questions about the historical origins of the episcopacy, to consider the theological significance of the bishop - whether as a witness, by historical succession, to the reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection; or as an eschatological participation in the original apostolic office. Both of these serve to emphasize the centrality and immediacy of Christ’s work in the Church. The older tradition, in contrast, focused on the distinction between the permanent office of oversight in the Church and the particular gifts of the apostles for establishing the Church - their office of oversight being seen as a higher degree of the ‘presbyteral’ ministry of sacramental administration and pastoral authority. This focus on the authority of the episcopate, however, should not be set against the approaches of the 20th century as less , however - Ramsey’s originality, on this point at least, lies not so much in a new focus, but in the way he is able to draw out what the underlying point had been all along: the apostolic succession points to Jesus, because it connects us to him. The following section will bear this out.

127 Authority from Christ

Newman, in the last of the Oxford Movement’s ‘tracts’ dedicated to the apostolic succession, defined it thus: ‘[T] Christ founded a visible Church as an ordinance for ever, and endowed it once for all with spiritual privileges, and set His Apostles over it, as the first in a line of ministers and rulers, like themselves except in their miraculous gifts, and to be continued from them by successive ordination.’38 The visible Church and its spiritual privileges - the knowledge of the Scriptures, the grace of the sacraments, and the life of faith - should be uncontroversial; the existence of a particular ministerial office, and the ‘rule’ of the apostles and of bishops after them, have already been discussed. But the key point of the apostolic succession - the continuation of the episcopal office by ‘successive ordination’ from the apostles - remains. Why must the authority of the ministry be imparted, specifically, through a ‘succession’?

St Paul had posed the question, ‘how shall they preach, except they be sent?’ (Rom.10:15); and regarding the priesthood, it had been said, ‘[N]o man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God’—indeed, even ‘Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, to day have I begotten thee’ (Heb. 5:4-5). Ministerial authority, therefore, must come from God. So Article 26 states that the clergy conduct their sacramental ministry by Christ’s ‘commission and authority.’ Article 23 likewise picks up on this theme when it insists that a minister must ‘be lawfully called and sent.’ It then adds, ‘those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work by men who have publick authority given unto them … to call and send Ministers.’ Ministerial authority comes from Christ - but it comes through those who have ‘publick authority’ to give it—namely, the bishops. But how does one connect the authority of Christ with the authority of bishops? Here, the argument turns to John 20:21, where Christ tells the eleven, ‘as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you’ - and if Christ was sent with authority to commission others, the apostles, being sent in the same way by Christ, likewise have authority to hand on the commission given to them.39 Christ was sent by his Father, and so sent the apostles, who in turn sent those who came after them - and so on, down to the present day.

The outline of this argument was followed consistently (though with some variation as to exact form and supporting argument) throughout the High Church tradition. It is followed more or less directly by the Convocation Book of 1606, Leslie, Jones, Perceval, and Palmer.40 Christopher Wordsworth adds the observation that Christ is not only the great High Priest, but also the first apostle, and indeed, the first bishop (1 Pet. 2:25).41 Beyond this, the more general principle requiring a divine commission for the ministry is stated by Waterland, Staley, and Dix.42 Among the Tracts for the Times, Tract 5 argues from Article 26 to the apostolic succession: no-one is worthy to serve as a minister, therefore the efficacy of the sacraments must rest on a divine commission rather than the minister’s own holiness; Tract 17 argues that the succession therefore teaches us to trust in the promises God, rather than

128 our own strength.43 This principle is also maintained consistently by the Liberal Catholic school. Lock insists on ‘valid channels’ of sacramental ministry; Moberly rejects this language, but nonetheless reiterates the traditional argument more fully than his contemporaries, emphasizing that even in the person of Jesus divine appointment is a necessary element of the priesthood (adding references to Rom. 12:6-8, 1 Cor. 12:29, Eph. 4:11).44 Gore meanwhile maintains that the pastoral authority of the episcopate is ‘derived from above’ through a ‘commission, received from the transmission of the original pastoral authority which had been delegated by Christ Himself to His Apostles.’45 Ramsey, too, observes that the Church is not a democracy, and its authority - like its order - comes from God.46

A number of more substantial variations on this theme, however, merit individual consideration. Hooker, for instance, draws parallels with the Old Testament, not only in the matter of hierarchy, but with regard to succession: just as the Spirit given to the elders of Israel who assisted Moses ‘did descend from them to their successors in like authority and place,’ so too ‘the Holy Ghost which our Saviour in his first ordinations gave doth no less concur with spiritual vocations throughout all ages.’47 God himself having instituted the ‘ministry of things divine,’ the ‘authority and power’ of the ministry must be ‘given … in lawful manner.’ To this end, he ‘hath … ordained certain to attend upon the due execution of requisite parts and offices’ of the ministry, and the ordained are ‘ministers of God, … from whom their authority is derived, and not from men.’ Though this authority may be given directly from God, it is normally conveyed through his Church; and the ecclesial authority ‘to ordain and consecrate’ was first vested in the Apostles, who handed it on to the bishops after them.48

Andrewes, in turn, describes the authority given to bishops to convey their commission as power to act in persona Christi: the words of John 20:22-23, used in ordinations, are said by the bishops ‘not in our own, but as in His Person. We bid them from Him receive it, not from ourselves.’49 This is, however, accompanied by a sharp polemical denunciation of any who depart from the apostolic succession and take up the ministry of their own accord. These are denounced as ‘unsent’ and ‘hypostles,’ who ‘draw back’ from the Church’s fellowship (Heb. 10:38-39), and in another place are likened to the ‘thief’ who ‘entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way’ (John 10:1).50

Another perspective develops an argument from the . Leslie notes that since the promise of Christ’s presence is tied to their doing what he had commanded them, the apostles’ successors must have received from their predecessors the authority to do so; Jones adds that since ‘the end of the age’ is presumably past the Apostles’ lifetimes, this promise is given not only to them, but to ‘those who should succeed, and be accounted for the same.’51 Newman goes still further: this commissioning is proof that a particular form of Church government is given in Scripture, since it is nonsensical to require ordination (as such succession in office implies) without also requiring the authority to ordain, yet only churches which have the apostolic succession

129 have received this authority - one must either ordain under Christ’s commission, or not at all.52

The Liberal Catholic school adds the specific consideration of a sacramental character in the apostolic succession. Moberly notes that ‘even what is most distinctively Divine in ordination is still conferred through the Church.’53 Gore is even more explicit, observing that the human transmission of a divine commission combines ‘material from below’ with something heavenly: ‘Those who are to be ordained are, like the Levites, the offering of the people; but they receive, like Aaron and his sons, their consecration from above.’54 This distinction between the inward and outward elements, however, marks a turn towards emphasizing the principle of the succession over its historical form in the three-fold order. Gore even speculates that this principle might be maintained even if a distinct order of priesthood were to cease, all future ministers being ordained simply to the episcopate; whereas a break in the succession (whatever form it might take) is a discontinuity in the Church’s order parallel to that caused by heresy in the Church’s doctrine.55 Nonetheless, episcopacy itself cannot be dismissed lightly, since it appears to be ‘of apostolic origin,’ and ‘the Church, since the Apostles, has never conceived of itself as having any power to originate or interpolate a new office.’56

This turn towards the principle of succession over its historical embodiment is carried on by Mascall. Mascall’s emphasis on an eschatological perspective on the Church leads him to some discomfort with the notion of a ‘succession’ as such. Viewed historically, the Church’s ministry is constantly changing, one bishop being replaced by another, as the term ‘succession’ suggests. Eschatologically, however, the Church is not mutating so much as it is growing: it is a single ‘organism,’ the body of Christ, which does not change its nature, but which adds new members over time.57 So too with the episcopate, ‘there is no succession because there is no demise. Instead, there is incorporation into the apostolic college by the communication of the apostolic character. The Apostolate receives a new member, who is then a part of it as the first apostles were.’58 Mascall charges that mechanical models of the succession ‘only too easily suggest that the minister provides a substitute for an absent Christ.’59 Mascall wishes to emphasize, in contrast, that ‘it is the ascended Christ, the great High Priest and Apostle, in whom the universal episcopate itself is rooted and from whom its apostolic and priestly character flows, who is the ultimate agent in every ordination and consecration, as he is in every other sacrament’ - the outward ministry and its historical succession are necessary, but secondary in importance.60

The point of the apostolic succession, then, can be summed up as follows. The Church belongs to Christ, and he alone has authority over it. All authority in the Church, therefore, must derive from him. The nature of authority is such that it must be received, not taken of one’s own accord; yet those who have received authority may confer it upon others. The succession in office from the apostles to the episcopate, therefore, serves as the means by which the ministers of Christ’s Church are commissioned with his authority. The

130 authority, however, is Christ’s, and he alone is the source and ultimate agent in every act of sacramental ministry, and in every right and godly exercise of pastoral authority. Thus ordination, which confers this ministerial commission to act on Christ’s behalf, itself comes from Christ, though it is transmitted through a succession of bishops reaching back to the Apostles.

The Functions of the Apostolic Succession

The doctrine of the apostolic succession, in claiming a divine commission, is inherently polemical. Any claim to have authority through a particular ‘channel’ poses a challenge to those who are outside that authority structure. This doctrine, however, has, over its centuries-long history within Anglicanism, been used in a number of different battles, evolving from its origins as a defense of the established Church order against opponents of episcopacy within the Church of England, to a sort of ‘protest doctrine,’ set in opposition to other sources of authority which would seek to influence the Church - and even against perceived error in the Church itself.

In Hooker, the axiom that ministerial authority must be received from God is not, as in later writers, merely used to discredit other traditions; rather, those who seek episcopal ordination are following the example of Christ in humble submission to an ‘orderly calling.’61 Hooker is not free of polemic - far from it - but on this point at least he exercised a moderation absent from the most prominent voices of the following generations. King James I, when challenged on the subject of episcopacy, famously asserted that if there would be no bishops, there would be no king - that is, that the same divine right established the authority of both. Lancelot Andrewes, a favorite of the Jacobean court, provided a theological ground for this: Moses and Aaron represent respectively the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, and the rebels against each - Jannes and Jambres against Moses, Korah and Dathan against Aaron - were equally damned by God for their rebellion.62

Church and state would not remain so closely wedded, however. Beginning with the nonjuring controversy, the Crown came to be seen, by some at least, as a potential threat to the prerogatives of the Church, and it is here that we see the first use of the apostolic succession as a protest against the violation of the Church. The first author in our study to reflect this view is Leslie, for whom, though they were both divine in origin, the ‘sacred and civil powers were like two parallel lines, which could never meet or interfere’—so for instance, ecclesiastical absolution should not interfere with civil punishment, nor civil pardon with ecclesiastical discipline. While ‘each may and ought to assist the other’ within the bounds of its own authority, interference by one power in the sphere of the other causes only ‘confusion.’63 While he is critical of papal encroachments on the civil authority of kings, he is particularly hostile to the effect of royal encroachments, as begetting ‘a

131 secular spirit in the clergy,’ who ‘look no further than to the place whence their preferments come,’ and becoming courtiers schooled in the arts of flattery, lose ‘the evangelical spirit of Christian simplicity, the παρρησια, the open and fearless, but modest zeal and courage in asserting the truths of the gospel against all opposition, which first planted the church of Christ, and must always support her.’64Leslie’s solution is a restoration of the rights of the episcopate, as founded on the apostolic succession. In a similar vein, John Johnson, a sympathizer with the nonjurors, appealed to the divine commission of the episcopate as reason for the bishops to defend clergy against secular forces which ‘would by virtue of civil sanctions violate and break through the fences of primitive Apostolic provisions.’65

This use of the apostolic succession surfaced again in the Tracts for the Times, as a rallying cry in the face of a secularized government and perceived threats to the Church. Newman’s first tract was a call to rally behind the bishops as ‘SUCCESSORS TO THE APOSTLES’ and posed the question, are clergy ministers of Christ, or ministers of the world—is ministerial authority claimed from Christ, through the apostolic succession, or from the state? The second tract, which followed quickly, dealt specifically with Parliament’s abolition of the Irish bishoprics as a state intrusion into the rights of the Church.66 But they did not restrict themselves to political concerns: Tract 1 also posed the question, whether clergy were ministers of Christ, deriving their authority through the Apostolic Succession, or merely ministers of the world, with authority derived from the government or popular approval, and there are throughout the tracts on apostolic succession repeated calls for clergy to act in accordance with their divine commission: not as country gentlemen or officers of the state, but as servants and ministers of God.67

In succeeding generations, the appeals by Leslie and the Tractarians to the apostolic succession as a reminder of the clergy’s accountability to Christ would be turned on the episcopate itself. Charles Gore, for instance admits that the ministry has been distorted over the course of history by accruals from the popular religion and political systems of the surrounding cultures, as well as by distortions introduced by clerical ambition, and that therefore ‘the conception of the ministry needs a purging before it can be vindicated.’68 He therefore insists on the reassertion of the Church’s independent spiritual authority, against secular intrusions - with a particular criticism of the English Church as having abandoned its prerogative.69 Similarly, Mascall’s turn to an eschatological understanding of the Church is driven in large part by the observation that ‘to accept the historic Episcopate without insisting on any theory about it can, in practice, only mean accepting the Episcopate in the form which, in the course of history, it has come to take. And that is to destroy all hope of correcting the abuses with which it has become infected.’70 Rather, the Church is called to discern ‘the persisting Christian reality’ of the episcopate’s commission from Christ, behind its various historical manifestations, and then ‘to let it express itself in the form that is appropriate to our own day, not as something which we have thought up … in the study or on the ecclesiastical committee, but which we have inherited as a concrete historic reality by our baptism into the Body of Christ.’71 Meanwhile, for Ramsey, the apostolic succession

132 properly understood is a corrective, not just to the ministry, but to the whole Church in the midst of its divisions.72

The uses of the apostolic succession within the High Church tradition, therefore, derive from the fact that having received authority is to be accountable to the one who gives it. As the Church’s ministry has been commissioned by Christ, it is answerable to him—and to him alone. Thus it stands as a call to resist the forces of the world which would pervert the Church, and a call to greater faithfulness on the part of the clergy, the bishops, and the Church itself.

‘Bene Esse’ and ‘Esse’: The Problem of Non-Episcopacy

The same polemical nature which makes the apostolic succession a defense of the faith, however, has also made it a problematic doctrine within the post-Reformation Church. It is implicit in the claim that ecclesial authority has descended from Christ through the apostles and the succession of bishops, that those who do not have bishops lack divine authority (at best); or are themselves rebels against God (at worst). Even to claim that the doctrine of apostolic succession (if not the apostles’ actual successors) is a call to faithfulness has raised, for some, the question of whether polities without such a call can themselves remain faithful. Indeed, in the doctrine’s earliest years within the Church of England, the ‘perversion’ to which it was opposed was non-episcopacy itself! In the tumultuous century following the English Reformation, the primary objective for the conforming party was to defend the Elizabethan Settlement - reformed doctrine with catholic order - against critics on both sides, by any means necessary. Faced with a contingent within the Church of England which sought to exchange episcopal order for presbyterial polity, the defenders of episcopacy were not at all concerned to make nice over their differences. By the 1590s, a polemic around the ‘gainsaying of Korah’ (Num. 16:10; Jude 11) had become common - it is cited in this period both by Hooker and Andrewes - which remained in currency among High Churchmen up to the middle of the nineteenth century.73 This line of attack even appears to have received some official standing: the revisions that occurred upon the death of Charles II in 1685 to the service of thanksgiving for the restoration of the monarchy (and with it, ‘the publick and free profession of thy true Religion and Worship’) replaced the solemn admonitions of Romans 13 to obey the civil authorities with Jude’s fierce denunciations of religious error.

Today, of course, we have a more ecumenical atmosphere - derived partly from a godly concern for unity, partly from a liberal protestant watering-down of denominational distinctive - which makes such language awkward. Even in the early years, however, this stance was not uncomplicated - the same Stuart court which insisted upon the divine right of both kings and bishops was allied (if somewhat ambivalently) with non-episcopal

133 Protestants against Roman Catholic antagonists in Europe. Such complications pose the question, in what way is episcopacy necessary in the life of the Church? Historically, two positions have been espoused. The bene esse position, held by churchmen from Hooker through the middle of the nineteenth century, holds that episcopacy is necessary for the ‘well-being’ of the Church. In contrast, the esse position which emerged from the Oxford Movement and has since been prominent among Anglo-Catholics, holds that episcopacy is necessary for a Christian body to be structured as a Church.74 It is to these arguments that we now turn.

The ‘Bene Esse’ Tradition

The most prominent exponent of the ‘bene esse’ position on the episcopate, as well as the earliest to engage it at length, is Richard Hooker. Hooker is a staunch defender of episcopacy - not only does he cite the ‘gainsaying of Korah’ noted above, but he also holds that to insist on the equality of presbyters with bishops is heresy, and that those who overthrow bishops do so by ‘foul practices,’ serving ‘not Christ … but rather Christ’s adversary and enemy of his Church.’75 This is not to make episcopacy essential to the existence of the Church, however. For Hooker, episcopacy is a law - ‘a directive rule unto goodness of operation;’ this ‘goodness’ is a fittingness of the work being done to the appointed end or goal of the thing in question.76 Because each law is ordered to a particular end, however, there is an inherent element of contingency: any law that does not fulfil its end, due to either inherent flaws or external circumstance, must be changed. There are indeed unchanging laws: the nature of God, his ordering of creation (particularly the moral order), and certain things pertaining to salvation, are all perfectly aligned with their ends and will not change. All human laws, however, are imperfect; and general laws not directly related to morality or the order of salvation, even if from God, will necessarily face particular circumstances that merit exceptions.77 Within the Church, the doctrines of the faith and the administration of the sacraments have been revealed supernaturally by God and are unchangeable. There are, however, a number of ‘things that are accessory hereunto,’ including ‘ceremonies’ (that is, ‘such external rites as are usually annexed unto Church actions’) as well as ‘matters of government.’78 These, not being revealed from God, lie under the authority of the Church. Episcopacy, as a matter of government, was instituted by the 79 Apostles under the authority of the Church to order its own government.

To say that episcopacy is a matter of the Church’s authority, however, is not to say that Scripture plays no part. Hooker appeals, as we have seen, both to the Old Testament order and to Christ’s ordering of the twelve and the seventy. Scripture, however, contains several different kinds of things - including not only divine laws, but also precedents.80 So, for instance, the Old Testament sets forth as law the particular sacrificial priesthood which is fulfilled by Christ, but also a principle of order which is continued in the Church.81 Christ established a pattern of distinction between superior and inferior presbyters, which was then followed by the apostles in setting up the actual structure which would become the

134 episcopate.82 The correct use of these precedents, however, is the work of reason.83 Reason, for Hooker, is not the autonomous logical process of the later Enlightenment; rather, it is the faculty which, though fallible, guides action by determining what is good and right, through observing the causes and signs of goodness in God’s ordering of creation.84 Specifically, the laws of reason are characterized by results that are fitting to their end, in a way that can be seen without assistance of revelation, and that can be widely known and recognized—not just at any one time, but over the course of history.85 Since the end of Church Order is that ‘the militant Church’ should ‘resemble … that hidden dignity and glory wherewith the Church triumphant in heaven is beautified,’ the apostles appointed one presbyter in each church as ‘president or governor’ with ‘episcopal authority over the rest,’ in order to maintain godly order.86 The wisdom of this order is upheld by ‘the judgment of antiquity’ and ‘the long continued practice of the whole Church’ through its first fifteen centuries, ‘from which unnecessarily to swerve, experience hath never as yet found it safe.’87 As an order founded on scriptural precedent, in accordance with reason, and upheld by the long experience of the Church, episcopacy is rightly said to be established by God: ‘Of all good things God is the author, and consequently an approver of them;’ indeed, ‘being established by them on whom the Holy Ghost was poured in so abundant measure for the ordering of Christ’s Church, it had either divine appointment beforehand, or divine 88 approbation afterwards, and is in that respect to be acknowledged the ordinance of God.’

To say that a particular polity is ‘the ordinance of God,’ however, is not to say it cannot be changed. Even laws given by God in Scripture may be changed, so long as their purpose is known and understood - as, for instance, the Apostles set aside the ceremonial laws of Judaism as having been fulfilled by Christ.89 The necessity of a polity which upholds the dignity of the Church is not the necessity of any particular polity; and indeed, if any law were to cease to fulfil its ends, it should be changed.90 Such a change in polity is not the province of individual opinions or consciences, which are unreliable, but should be made by lawful authority.91 It does, however, lie within the authority of the Church, and though the Church has ‘ordinarily’ upheld an episcopal polity and ordination, ‘it may be in some cases not unnecessary’ to depart from this. Hooker does allow that God can call individuals directly, though God must ‘ratify’ such a vocation by ‘manifest signs and tokens … from heaven,’ in the same way that Jesus’ divine authority was testified to by his miraculous ministry. More frequently, such a departure may occur when a particular church ‘neither hath nor can have possibly a bishop to ordain.’92 Finally, however, it does lie within the authority of the Church ‘by universal consent’ to remove the authority of bishops, should they be guilty of ‘proud, tyrannical, and unreformable dealings,’ on which grounds bishops should carry their authority with ‘greater humility and moderation.’93

Hooker is not the only formative voice in this tradition, however. The more exact parallels drawn by Andrewes (for instance) between the hierarchy of the Old Covenant and that of the English Church were meant to assert the force not only of divine precedent but divine law for not only the three-fold order, but the whole polity of the Church of England.

135 It was instituted in the New Testament by Christ in the seminal form of the two orders of the twelve and the seventy - a limited form, so as not to abrogate the order of the earthly temple while it still stood - but with the divine intent that it should grow into the fullness of the Old Testament hierarchy, if under different names. In particular, the two orders of bishops and priests were directly instituted by Christ - ‘in place of the Twelve, succeeded Bishops; and in place of the Seventy, Presbyteri, Priests or Ministers.’ Accordingly, ‘the Apostles’ fellowship’ is a society characterized by this particular form of governance, and to depart from it is an ‘imagination’ in violation of the second commandment.94

A generation later, Laud moderates between Hooker and Andrewes. Hooker, in placing ecclesiastical governance under the authority of the Church, nonetheless allows that some things are more changeable than others; ‘services’ and ‘offices’ in the Church have varied significantly according to changing historical needs, whereas the three orders of bishops, priests, and deacons ‘had their beginning from Christ and his blessed Apostles themselves,’ and still continue ‘the same’ as ‘they were from the first beginning.’ 95 Laud follows suit, distinguishing between the authority given to the ‘calling’ of bishops and that which is ‘adjunct’ to it; and between orders and degrees (roughly corresponding to Hooker’s ‘offices’) of ministry.96 Regarding the three orders, however, Laud follows Andrewes rather than Hooker. He is willing to allow, with Hooker, that episcopacy may be of ‘apostolical institution,’ but only in the sense that it is ‘materially and originally, in the ground and intention of it, from Christ Himself, though perhaps the Apostles formalized it.’97 Episcopacy is ‘the institution of Christ Himself;’ a ‘divine institution,’ established by ‘divine right’ (jure divino). It is not merely ‘juris divini ut suadentis, vel approbantis,’ (a view attributed to the Genevan school) but ‘juris divini imperantis.’98 It is not merely (as Hooker had said) upheld by ‘divine appointment beforehand, or divine approbation afterwards,’ but by divine command. The episcopate, therefore, stands not on the authority of the Church, but of God.

This is not to say, however, that it belongs to the esse of the Church. In an early debate with a Roman apologist, Laud had distinguished between a right Church which is incorrupt ‘in manners and doctrine’ and a true Church, ‘in the verity of essence,’ defined as ‘a company of men which profess the faith of Christ and are baptized into His name.’99 In a later controversy with the nonconforming Lord Saye, Laud concurs with Saye’s division between the esse, or ‘true being’ of a Church, and the bene esse of the Church (the ‘purity’ or ‘entire being of a true Church’) as concerning the ‘true ministry’ and ‘true worship’ of the Church.100 The existence of the Church, therefore, is defined by Baptism; the existence of a ‘true ministry,’ in accordance with divine command, pertains rather to its health or wholeness.

Each of these three figures upheld the conforming side in the debate over episcopacy. It is important to note, however, that this debate took place within England. There, as these figures and the subsequent High Church tradition saw it, the abuses of the Medieval Church were corrected, without breaking the succession of bishops. The Church

136 of England, therefore, simply was the Catholic Church in England; and to separate from the bishops of the English Church was inherently schismatic. This was spelled out in later writers of the High Church tradition. Leslie argues that even if episcopacy were grounded on merely human authority, the universal practice of the Church through its first fifteen centuries gives weight enough to episcopacy that disobedience is schismatic.101 Christopher Wordsworth, meanwhile, emphasizes that schism is a voluntary act of separation from the Church through ‘dissent from Ecclesiastical governors,’ ‘setting up or maintaining Bishop against Bishop, Pastor against Pastor, or altar against Altar.’ Schism, like heresy, is a sin against charity, as well as against Christian discipline and humility, and therefore schismatics and heretics alike lack salvation.102

On the other hand, the same churchmen are willing to be much more conciliatory towards continental Protestants. An argument is easily drawn from Hooker’s analysis, that as the medieval Church had ceased properly to preach God’s word and administer the sacraments, the ‘unreformable dealings’ of continental bishops had made the termination of episcopal polity in those churches necessary; since they no longer have bishops, presbyteral ordination is allowed. If a ‘true ministry’ belongs to the bene esse of the Church, there is room for flexibility - such churches may not fulfil that particular ideal, but that is no bar to recognition. So, for Palmer, though apostolicity required continuity of ministry in the apostolic succession, the holiness of the Church required only that a body be ‘derived peaceably and with Christian charity’ from churches in the apostolic succession, or that they be ‘subsequently received’ by the same.103 The continental Protestants were unjustly excommunicated for their attempts to reform the corruptions of the medieval Church, and so—in contrast to (who ‘are no part of the church of Christ’) - these churches lost the apostolic succession through no fault of their own; and, moreover, maintained ties with episcopal churches in England and Scandinavia.104 They are therefore not guilty of schism, and are not to be excluded from the body of the Church. (Palmer, Treatise, 1:143-144, 292-294) Similarly, both Perceval and Wordsworth define the Church’s apostolicity according to Acts 2:42, ‘the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship’ - the latter described more fully as ‘communion with them and their lawful successors.’ The pairing of doctrine and fellowship, however, allows for separation from the apostolic fellowship and succession, if it is necessary to the avoidance of false doctrine.105

While separation from the apostolic succession is therefore in some sense permissible (at least in the case of the continental protestants), it is nonetheless a grave matter. Jones draws an analogy between the role of the succession in the Church’s order and that of the Scriptures in the Church’s doctrine: if either were lost, we might do our best to carry on without it, but a substitute could not claim either divine origin or authority.106This, in turn, carries over directly into the question of sacramental efficacy. Schism is fatal, because it loses ‘the benefit of God’s ordinance for our salvation; as a limb severed from the body loses the life of the body … if we have no true Church, we have no true sacraments, to which the promises of life are annexed.’107 Though the sharpest of such denunciations might

137 be reserved for those who willfully reject the apostolic succession, there are lingering doubts about even justified cases of separation. So, for Perceval, any true ordination must be episcopal, because those who preserve ‘the Apostolic Commission’ have ‘a promise from God to bless the ministrations of their teachers: have an assurance that in the Sacrament of Baptism God seals His part of the covenant: and that in the Sacrament of the Eucharist He makes them partakers of the body and .’ ‘[W]here the commission is wanting,’ however, there is no ‘same assurance.’108

The ‘Esse’ Position

This discussion shifted somewhat around the time of the Oxford Movement. On the one hand, despite three centuries passing since the Reformation, and (in the 19th century) rapid technological developments improving communication and travel, the continental churches showed no interest in receiving the apostolic succession from their fellow protestants in England and Scandinavia - something which even churchmen of the older school found perplexing.109 Moreover, many such churches had become gravely infected with rationalism (the rejection of revelation for reason).110On both counts, then, it was less desirable to make excuses for the non- episcopal polities of continental Protestantism. On the other hand, parliamentary and ecclesiastical reforms in England itself seemed to threaten the Church of England’s status and self-understanding. . Though many (such as Palmer, Perceval, and Wordsworth) carried on the older tradition, the Tractarians offered a more dramatic response, insisting on the Church’s divine prerogative over the claims of the state - a prerogative, however, which was grounded in the apostolic succession as the esse of the Church.

Despite this change of posture, many of the early ‘Tracts for the Times’ show their debt to the older tradition. Indeed, the most substantive treatment of the subject, in Tract 15, was initially drafted by Palmer before his separation from the Oxford Movement, and 111 gives a preview of the argument (given above) more fully stated in the Treatise on the Church. Keble, like Perceval, links the commission conveyed by the apostolic succession to the question of sacramental assurance.112 There is, however, a shift in focus. Keble notes that ‘“Necessary to salvation,” and “necessary to Church Communion,” are not to be used as convertible terms,’ and makes allowances for cases (though he doubts there are any) where the apostolic succession is unattainable, but he describes such questions as ‘abstract.’ In the upheaval of the times, his main concern is ‘practical’: the loyalty of members already within the Church of England. ‘[I]t is our business to keep fast hold of the Church Apostolical, whereof we are actual members; not merely on civil or ecclesiastical grounds, but from real personal love and reverence, affectionate reverence, to our Lord and Saviour.’113

The Oxford Movement, however, was an alliance of individuals, not a ‘party’ with a unified voice. Thus, while Keble’s concern was ‘practical,’ Newman was drawn to the abstract questions his friend dismissed. For Newman, the ‘Visible Church’ is constituted by those bodies which share the Apostolic Succession; and although it need not be identical

138 with the number of those who are ultimately saved, it is a means of salvation, particularly 114 through the sacraments, which may only be dispensed by properly commissioned clergy. On the other hand, there is a moral distinction between active, willful schism, and inherited separation.115 Dissenters are therefore not ‘outside the Church’ or ‘outside salvation,’ and he admits there is great value in the deep piety of these traditions. Limiting the visible Church to the apostolic succession, without excluding non-episcopalians, presents a conundrum, which Newman resolves by analogy to the kingdoms of Israel and Judah: Israel was separated from the authorized temple worship in Jerusalem, yet they were still the people of God, and it was there that the ministry and miracles of Elijah and Elisha were to be found. The piety of non-episcopal bodies is therefore a challenge to a higher calling in those who have received the greater privileges of the apostolic succession. This, however, leaves non- episcopal churches in a sort of hinterland between the ‘Visible Church’ and those fully outside the Church. This leads Newman to theorize a graded hierarchy of religions, from the fullness of apostolic Christianity, through varying degrees of divergence, rather than a simple binary setting (a particular understanding of) the Church against everyone else. Thus ‘Protestant sects are not “in Christ,” in the same fullness that we are’ yet it is appropriate ‘that they should lie between us and heathenism.’116

From 1836 to the series’ end in 1841, the Tracts shifted their focus to the sacraments, hermeneutics, and catechetical method, leaving behind the somewhat tired polemics on the apostolic succession. A radical wing of the movement was forming, however, drawing Newman to a more extreme position, from which he continued to influence his more moderate friends. In 1839, he would reject the notion that non- episcopal Protestants had merely an imperfect form of church, exclaiming, ‘Imperfect! is a mouse an imperfect kind of bat?’117 In a similar vein, later editions of the Tracts saw references to non-episcopal ‘churches’ altered to address them instead as ‘bodies.’118 It is important to note, however, just what this change signifies. Palmer, as we have seen, thought that non-episcopal bodies were irregularly ordered; Hooker, in fact, had observed that episcopacy was so universal in the early Church that the fathers ‘did not account it to be a church which was not subject to a bishop.’119 The Tractarians were simply applying the patristic standard to the situation which the ‘old’ High Churchmen had discerned: a Christian body is not a church (though it may be in the Church), which is not structured as a church - that is, structured so as to express visibly the order and historical continuity of the Catholic Church. This marks a ‘flattening’ of views regarding non-episcopal polity. The ‘old’ High Churchmen had seen non-episcopacy as schismatic at home, but permissible abroad; official secularization of the British state made the former untenable, and widespread rationalism in Protestant Europe made the latter undesirable. English dissenters were no longer to be damned for schism - notably, the old reference to the ‘gainsaying of Korah’ disappears among the Tractarians and their successors - but a more critical eye was turned on non-episcopal Protestants abroad.

139 The Tractarian developments set the tone for the later Anglo-Catholic tradition, though the rapid social and intellectual changes of the 19th and 20th centuries entailed constant development, in contrast to the steadier period preceding the Oxford Movement. The emphasis on sacramental ministry continued to play a major role in Anglo-Catholic discussion of the apostolic succession. ‘The means of grace depend on a lawful ministry,’ because ministers are ‘branches’ of the vine, or ‘regular and valid channels,’ through which grace flows from Christ to the Church.120 ‘Security’ as to sacramental grace depends on a visible ‘historical continuity’ as ‘a part of the actual body founded by our Lord Himself.’121 Parallel arguments are made with regard to the teaching authority of the Church.122 Thus, ‘[t]he episcopate is of divine institution in the Church, and therefore a necessity.’123

Like the Tractarians, however, later Anglo-Catholics do not mean this to exclude non- episcopal bodies from the universal Church. They are full members in the (invisible) body of the Church by baptism, and have ‘something akin to the reality of the Church.’124 They may lack ‘the divine warrant of such grace,’ but God gives ‘uncovenanted grace’ as a reward for their faith.125 Gore even goes so far as to conclude, with the older High Churchmen, that past separations from the apostolic succession cannot be condemned, due to historical corruptions within the Church, and that the maxim, ‘extra ecclesiam nulla salus,’ is of only limited truth.126 ‘God’s love is not limited by His covenant,’ and indeed, God’s grace has worked ‘largely’ through non-episcopal ministries carried out faithfully. Nonetheless, ‘[i]f He is not bound to His sacraments, we men, up to the limits of our knowledge, certainly are;’ and faced with modernity’s antagonism towards the faith, there is an added obligation to seek the fellowship of a church in the apostolic succession, as the churches ‘which can give the completest guarantee of security and permanence.’127

The Ecumenical ‘Esse’

The Oxford Movement generated another change, however: a shift towards a more ecumenical mindset. The Tractarians did indeed appeal to the formularies of the Church of England, but they also appealed beyond them, to the wider ‘consent’ of the whole Church, especially as it was expressed in the period of the great ecumenical councils. The Church of England, if it were indeed an orthodox expression of Christianity, was answerable ultimately not only to itself, but to the whole of Christ’s Church - and so its formularies, if they were assumed to be orthodox, must be read accordingly. Initially, this was simply a doctrinal position; but after Newman’s conversion, personal ties provided the vehicle for this to grow into something more. From 1865-1870, Pusey published a three-part Eirenicon discussing doctrinal differences between Romanism and Anglicanism as the opening salvo in a plea for Church unity. It wasforceful enough that Newman quipped in response, ‘You discharge your olive branch as if from a catapult,’ but any hopes for improved relations were dashed by the .128 Similar overtures were made to Eastern Orthodoxy, though they were complicated by Pusey’s thorough defense of the .129

140 The ecumenical attitude persisted, however, and the doctrine of the apostolic succession came to play a significant role in the way this played out. Palmer’s Treatise had outlined what is now known as the ‘,’ according to which the Catholic Church is embodied in the three traditions which carry on the apostolic succession - namely, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Anglicanism - each being an equal ‘branch’ of the Church (though Anglicanism, in Palmer’s account, is somewhat superior to the other two, in light of its doctrinal purity). There is a hint of complacency in Palmer’s account; but if one is to appeal to the whole Church, as the Tractarians and later Anglo-Catholics were wont to do, one cannot be complacent about the fact that the Church, even narrowly defined by the apostolic succession, is not exactly ‘whole.’ So, for instance, Staley recounts something close to Palmer’s account of the ‘branch theory,’ with the addition of the Old Catholic churches which separated from Rome after Vatican I as a fourth branch, but then adds the observation that although these divisions are not quite ‘the amputation of limbs,’ they are still ‘serious wounds;’ they are ‘exceedingly sad … as being contrary to the mind of our blessed Lord, … as hindering the spread of the gospel, and the conversion of the world to Christ … as a ground of perpetual reproach.’ Therefore, ‘[i]t is our duty to possess a spirit desirous of re-union, and to keep up such a spirit by earnest prayer, and in all ways of speech and feeling as ever ready for re-union when the path shall be opened for us.’130

Among the Liberal Catholics, the association between the apostolic succession and the call to unity among Christians was strengthened still further. They note that as the apostolic succession is the embodiment of the Church’s ‘historic continuity’ with Christ and the apostles, it is therefore, like the Scriptures, the Creeds, and the sacraments, a ‘safeguard’ of the Church’s unity.131 The Church’s unity therefore is to be defined neither by papal centralization nor by an unstructured understanding of the ‘priesthood of all believers,’ but by the episcopate.132 Gore, in a late work, expresses toleration for the reformed Roman Catholicism that emerged from the Council of Trent; and goes beyond the old High Church argument regarding the Protestant defense of ‘divine principles’ to claim that, in light of the many ‘manifest fruits of the Spirit’ among them, it would ‘approach to 133 blasphemy against the Holy Spirit’ to deny God’s presence and blessing among them. This positive attitude towards both Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions allows him to argue that the path to unity, though slow, lies in a willingness to learn from the good found in other traditions of Christianity. But, while ‘interdenominational action is possible,’ ‘what is undenominational’ is not, because ‘[t]he Christianity from which nothing can grow is the 134 Christianity which ignores the obligation of definite membership and a definite creed.’ For this to happen, however, the ‘common undenominational type of religion’ set forth by liberal Protestantism needs to be resisted through stronger notions of , clearer doctrinal standards for clergy, the willingness of the Church to stand on its apostolic authority, and by an openness to correction from voices within.135

141 Ramsey carries this argument a step further. If the episcopate is an organ expressing the unity of the whole Church, it points to the incompleteness of any part (episcopal or otherwise) in a divided Church. The apostolic succession belongs to the esse, not of a particular church, but of the whole Church. ‘[T]hose who possess it will tremble and never boast, for none can say it is “theirs.”136 To make it the esse of the Church does not, therefore, exclude non-episcopalians from the Church - quite the opposite. The succession is not a pedigree, to set one denomination above others, but rather bears witness ‘to the Gospel of God by which alone, in one universal family, mankind can be made perfect.’137 This orientation, however, gives his account of various denominations a more critical edge. Each tradition suffers from ecclesiological defects - Rome’s centralization in the papacy, Protestants’ defective views of the whole Church; in Anglicanism both the threat of Erastianism and, on the High Church side specifically, the tendency either (with Palmer) to acquiesce in schism through a self-congratulatory use of the apostolic succession, or (with Staley) to make validity of orders ‘the sole test of membership in the Church of God,’ while ignoring ‘the doctrine of the organic body.’138 Through such criticism, Ramsey wishes to show that in a divided Church all denominations are at least partly defective - because each needs the others. Even if a Church ‘has’ the apostolic succession, ‘when historic Christendom is divided, the meaning’ - though not the validity - ‘of its orders … is maimed; no longer are they performed with the authority and the outward commission of the whole visible Church.’139 Episcopacy is therefore not something to set one part of the church against another, but a necessity for the whole Church.

No “unchurching,” and no denials of the experience of any Christians need accompany the firmest insistence upon Episcopacy, so long as the insistence is made in terms of the universal Church. The truth manifested in Congregational fellowship, in Presbyterian order, in every section of Christendom will be preserved as parts, but only as parts of the whole. The Episcopate expresses another factor of the truth, namely the one historic family wherein all sections, including those now possessing Episcopacy, shall be made full. No Christian shall deny his Christian experience, but all Christians shall grow more fully into the one experience in all its parts.140

Each part has its portion of the whole truth of the universal Church; ‘all Christians’ therefore ‘need the restoration of the one episcopate’ in order to deepen the unity of ‘the one Church 141 of God.’

As these writers show, the esse position is just as capable of an ecumenical orientation as the bene esse view of the episcopate; conversely, as we have seen, the bene esse position is just as capable of polemical invective as the esse view of the episcopate. They simply approach matters differently. For the bene esse tradition, the lack of episcopacy among continental Protestants was excusable, because order - even if divinely mandated - did not pertain directly to the being or existence of a particular church. The assumption of a unified

142 national Church, however, led to sharp attacks on dissenters in England as damnable schismatics. The esse position, by contrast, made it harder (though not impossible) to excuse deviation from the apostolic succession. Its original limited scope as a requirement for the structure of a particular church, however, appears to stem from a concern not to refuse recognition as fellow Christians to the members of non-episcopal traditions. Meanwhile, holding up the claim that visible, historical continuity with Christ’s mission on earth was essential to the life of the Church increasingly meant that the episcopate came to be seen as a sign of unity. Thus, when Ramsey finally made the episcopate essential not just to the structure of a particular church, but to the life of the whole Church, it was done not to exclude non-episcopal traditions, but as a means of emphasizing the oneness of the Church.

The central claim in this remains nonetheless the insistence upon continuity with the ministry of Christ himself. Within the High Church tradition, the role of the clergy as ‘ministers of word and sacrament’ means that they are acting on behalf of God himself. This requires that the minister receive authority to do so as a commission from Christ himself; this authority is received through a succession of bishops who have themselves been empowered to impart this commission. Having received this authority from Christ, however, means that the minister is answerable to him - for soundness of doctrine, for diligence in administering the sacraments, and for faithfulness in the conduct of the pastoral office. Thus, while the apostolic succession remains a requirement and a claim of authority, it also entails accountability - on the part of the minister, and ultimately on the part of the Church itself - to the person, work, and teaching of Christ.

143 The Ministry of Christ: The Authority, Grace, and Character of Ordination

Authority and the Nature of the Ministry

The doctrine of the apostolic succession holds that the authority of the ministry is received as a commission from Christ. This commission is to be conveyed by bishops, through ordination; but ordination is a complex thing. It not only purports to give authority to perform certain functions in the Church, but also to give grace—indeed, in the Anglican ordinals, to give the Holy Spirit—for the performance of those tasks. Grace, however, is rarely (if ever) given merely as an external assistance for this or that task—it works on, and in, those to whom it is given. One might say, it makes its mark. These observations bring with them their own sets of questions. The preceding discussion of the apostolic succession has, of course, discussed the authority of the ministry, but this authority has been considered primarily with regard to its origin in Christ and transmission through the episcopate; it remains to be considered what is its content, and how it has shaped the High Church tradition’s understanding of the ministry. Again, if grace is given, what does this say about the nature of the ordination rite, and what kind of grace is conferred? And finally, what is the mark—or character—imparted in ordination?

The natural place to start with each of these questions is in the Prayer Book and the Ordinal. What does the Prayer Book say that the minister does? What does the Ordinal say about the ordained? The most prominent of all these, of course, is what is said in the actual act of ordination. In the Ordination of Priests, Cranmer used the formula of John 20:22-23, ‘Receive the holy goste, whose synnes thou doest forgeve, they are forgeven: and whose sinnes thou doest retaine, thei are retained.’142 The beginning of this statement—the gift of the Holy Spirit—will be considered in due turn. The latter part of the sentence, however, states a principle task of the priest—forgiving and retaining the sins of those under his pastoral care. It is not surprising, given the prominence of this task in the ordination rite itself, that the ministry of absolution receives considerable attention.143 Hooker notes that ministers hold the power of the keys (Matt. 16:19), making them ‘stewards of the house of God, under whom they guide, command, judge, and correct his family.’ This leads to ‘sundry functions, some belonging to doctrine, some to discipline,’ of which the act of absolution is foremost.144 Andrewes in particular focuses on this aspect of the priestly ministry. Forgiveness is inherent in Baptism and the Eucharist, as well as preaching and prayer; yet this is something distinct. The apostles had already preached and prayed and baptized during Jesus’ earthly ministry; the Eucharist had been instituted at the Last Supper, when they were commanded to ‘do this.’ Here after the Resurrection, however, Jesus gives them a new power—the power of absolution.145

144

On the other hand, absolution is not the only function of priests. For Hooker, the purpose of the ministry is ‘to honour God and to save men.’ The function of the ministry therefore includes both ‘contemplation, which helpeth forward the principal work of the ministry’ (‘God’s honour’) as well as the ‘principal work of administration’ which consists in ‘doing the service of God’s house and in applying unto men the sovereign medicines of grace’—that is, the sacraments.146 This sacramental ministry is also emphasized by the nonjurors and their sympathizers. For Leslie, this is a direct consequence of the doctrine of the apostolic succession. The succession is the handing on from the apostles of the commission they received from Christ, which is Christ’s own commission from his Father. Christ was ordained our great High Priest ‘to offer up to God the prayers of the people of God, and make intercession for them’ and ‘on God’s part, to sign and seal the pardon of their sins to them, and in his name to bless them,’ yet these too are the duties of the Christian priest.147 This pertains specifically to Baptism and the Eucharist as ‘seals of the new covenant.’148 Johnson likewise emphasizes the sacramental authority of the priesthood, adding that the power of consecration also entails ‘the sole power of withholding’ the Eucharist; and its origin in the episcopate makes bishops ‘under Christ, the sole source and 149 origin of all ecclesiastical authority strictly so called.’

This sacramental office is straightforward with regard to the episcopate. With regard to the presbyterate, however, there was a shift over time. Leslie holds that the sacramental authority of the priesthood is held directly from Christ (and not by delegation from the episcopate), as seen in his commissioning of the 70 disciples.150 Johnson, on the other hand, maintains that the ‘sole power of consecrating and giving the Eucharist’ is ‘originally in the Bishops, and in Priests subordinately only.’151 Johnson’s understanding came to be the standard interpretation. Palmer emphasizes that the original understanding of the presbyterate in the early church emphasized their teaching office.152 Gore, in turn, notes that early questions about proper ‘order’ with regard to sacramental celebration were primarily concerned with the bishop’s authorization, though the possibility that all those so authorized may have been presbyters does not preclude the requirement of ordination for sacramental 153 validity.

Taken together, however, the emphases on absolution, sacramental celebration, and teaching all add up to a single coherent perspective. The power to absolve, to administer or withhold the sacraments, and to define teaching, are all elements in what Palmer describes as ‘the power of spiritual jurisdiction in each church, of regulating its affairs generally, and especially its discipline’ which is held principally by the bishop, but is shared by him with his presbyters.154 The distinguishing feature of the ministry, therefore, has traditionally been identified as this ‘spiritual jurisdiction’ - or we might say, pastoral authority - held in the degree appropriate to each order: ordinary jurisdiction held by bishops over their dioceses, and subordinate authority held by priests over their cures.

145 The Grace of Ordination

It is not surprising, since the High Church tradition has seen the Church as a nation or society, that it would see Holy Orders as providing the order and governance of that society. But, particularly with the emphasis placed on the apostolic succession as a commission authorizing the minister to perform the acts related to this office, it would be easy to understand ordination as merely an authorization. John 20:22, however, as used in the Ordinal, indicates otherwise: ‘Receive the Holy Ghost.’ These words are generally taken to convey, not the person of the Holy Spirit, but his gifts. This, in turn, raises two questions. If ordination conveys a gift or grace of the Holy Spirit, is it therefore a sacrament? And what sort of grace, specifically, is given?

The Sacramental Nature of Ordination

Due to its roots in the Reformed tradition, Anglicans, including High Churchmen, have typically avoided calling ordination a sacrament. Article 25 states that ordination, along with four others that like it are ‘commonly called sacraments’ is not a ‘sacrament of the Gospel,’ not having ‘like nature … with Baptism, and the Lord's Supper,’ because it lacks ‘any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God.’ A case study in interpretation is given by the Homily of Common Prayer, which spells out the ‘exact signification of a sacrament’ as having ‘visible signs expressly commanded in the New Testament, whereunto is annexed the promise of free forgiveness of our sin, and of our holiness and joining in Christ.’ Thus absolution is commanded by Christ and conveys forgiveness of sins, but the ‘outward sign’—traditionally, the laying on of hands—is given nowhere in Scripture. Ordination, likewise, ‘hath [Christ’s] visible sign and promise,’ but ‘lacks the promise of remission of sin.’ In a similarly technical analysis, Andrewes concurs that ordination is not a sacrament: first, because Sacraments properly confer saving grace (which the grace of ordination is not); second, because in John 20:22, Christ instituted the sign of breath, but ordination is conferred through the laying on of hands, whereas for a true sacrament ‘neither matter nor form He hath instituted, may be changed.’155 Cosin, in turn defines the sacraments as ‘signs and token of some general promised grace, which always really descendeth from God unto the soul that duly receiveth them.’156 Ordination, being given only to a few, does not qualify. On the other hand, these grounds for denying ordination the status of a sacrament are rather technical. Cosin is willing to allow that ‘[o]ther significant ceremonies’ which are themselves ‘no sacraments,’ may yet be ‘as sacraments.’157 Similarly, later Anglo- Catholics (most notably the Liberal Catholics) have argued that in a broader sense it is at least sacramental, as an outward act conveying an inward grace. Thus Gore can say that the ‘transmission of ministerial authority’ by ordination is ‘an outward act, of sacramental character, in which the laying-on of hands, with prayer, is the “visible sign.”’158

146

Despite this Anglican reticence about conferring on ordination the status of a sacrament, its ‘sacramental character’ came to be a matter of close scrutiny with the publication of the papal bull by Pope Leo XIII. The bull analyzes the Anglican ordinal according to the medieval scholastic requirements of sacramental validity - form, matter, and intent - and finds defects of both form and intent.159 Prior to the bull’s publication, High Church discussion of the sacraments and similar rites had typically focused on God’s initiative in them - with regard to orders, the apostolic succession - rather than on technical requirements for ‘validity.’ Moberly speaks in a very traditional way when he worries, despite a grudging admission that ‘externals’ are not completely irrelevant to the sacraments, that an undue focus on these ‘requirements’ risks becoming shallow, one-sided, or overly technical.160 Likewise, the official response of the Archbishops insists that form, matter, and intent cannot be narrowly defined with regard to any sacrament, despite acknowledging ‘that the laying on of hands is the matter of ordination; … that the form is prayer or blessing appropriate to the ministry to be conferred; …that the intention of the Church … is to be ascertained.’161 Inevitably, however, there would be some (especially on the more Romeward-looking end of the Anglo-Catholic spectrum) who would adopt this mode of discussing the sacraments. One such writer is Dix, who (like Moberly) adds the requirement of an authorized minister, but then proceeds to argue for the scholastic definition using a number of legal analogies: an act read ex officio by a magistrate has legal effect, which reading by a private citizen does not; ‘be hanged’ differs in meaning depending on the intent with which it was spoken; an arrest is illegal if not done with the proper forms; many legal documents require a material signature.162

The Grace of the Ministerial Office

Anglican ambivalence about whether or not ordination is a sacrament has not, in the High Church tradition, translated into any doubts about the grace conferred. This grace, however, is to be distinguished from two other kinds of grace. Ordination conveys neither saving grace, nor grace for the particular ministry of a particular person, but a grace of the ministerial office. For Andrewes, these three forms of grace are represented, respectively, by the descent of the Spirit as a dove at Christ’s baptism, the descent of the Spirit as tongues of fire on Pentecost, and the gift of the Spirit as breath in John 20:22.163 Baptism ‘serves to make us Christians;’ but this gift as breath is not given to the Apostles simply as Christians. At Pentecost, the twelve became ‘Apostles properly so called,’ both receiving ‘divers languages’ and ‘speaking wisely;’ but ‘we know, none is either the holier, or the learneder, by his ordination.’164 Thus, the grace of ordination is neither (in scholastic terminology) gratia gratum faciens—‘grace making graceful’ or saving grace—nor gratia gratis data—‘grace freely given’ to an individual for a particular situation or ministry. It is a third category, which Andrewes calls ‘χαρις διακονιας ‘the grace of our calling;’ a kind of gratia gratis data, given not to the apostles personally, but to the office of the ordained ministry which began in them.165

147 In similar fashion, Hooker and the Liberal Catholics distinguish the gift given in the upper room from the miraculous powers granted at Pentecost. This gift is rather, for Hooker, one of ministerial authority and spiritual power. The ministry is not, therefore, a prophetic office— ‘we no where find Prophets to have been made by ordination, but all whom the Church did ordain were either to serve as presbyters or as deacons.’166 Likewise, the Liberal Catholics, while recognizing a strong charismatic element in the ministry of the early Church, nonetheless draw a similar distinction between structural and non-structural sources of authority (though they are not to be seen as competing—the Holy Spirit is not opposed to Church order!)167 Though the ordered ministry is essential in a way the lapsed charismatic ministries are not, Gore in particular, believes it is ‘a serious weakness in the later church that it has ceased to expect, or welcome, or use such gifts as those of “” or “healing” or “miracles,” which inspired the courage and confirmed the faith of the earliest 168 church.’

For Hooker, as for Andrewes, the gift of the Holy Spirit to the apostles in the upper room after the resurrection fulfills Jesus’ earlier promise of the power of the keys.169 As Andrewes puts it, it is through this gift that ‘they were made sacred, and made persons public, and their acts authentical.’ The purpose of this spiritual authority given to their acts was that they would be ‘Christian-makers; such, as whose ministry Christ would use’ both ‘to make Christians … and keep them’; and it is specifically to ‘keep’ Christians that they were ‘enabled to do somewhat about the remission of sins.’170 It is this office which the ministry carries on; and so, as Hooker points out, ‘the same power’ is now given in ordination, using ‘the same form of words.’ Having thus received the Spirit, ‘we have for the least and meanest duties performed by virtue of ministerial power, that to dignify, grace, and authorize them, which no other offices on earth can challenge.’171

The Character of Ordination

The grace of ordination, then, gives real spiritual effect to the actions performed under the pastoral and sacramental authority of the priesthood. It is, however, χαρις διακονιας, given not to the individual as such, but to the office of the priesthood. A gift given to the office, however, cannot be instantiated apart from those who hold that office. Andrewes calls this gift of the Spirit, of the three seen in the New Testament, ‘the most proper’ (‘[f]or most kindly it is for the Spirit to be inspired, to come … in manner of breath’) and ‘of greatest use’ (because it is needed ‘so oft as we sin’). Of particular note here, however, is that he also calls it the ‘most effectual’: ‘in both the other, … the Spirit did but come, but light upon them. In this It comes, not upon them, but even into them, intrinsically. It is insufflavit, It went into their inward parts; and so made them indeed θεοπνευστους, men inspired by God, and that within.’172

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A later Anglo-Catholic might well fault Andrewes, in so elevating ordination above Baptism, for too low a baptismal theology. Our point here, however, is that the combination of a grace ‘of the office’ which is nonetheless imparted inwardly rather than outwardly suggests an inward ‘mark’ of the office imparted in ordination—or what is often called, the character of ordination. As Hooker puts it, the power given in ordination is rightly ‘both termed a mark or character and acknowledged to be indelible.’ It is a ‘mark of separation,’ because it separates clergy from laity, and makes them ‘a special order consecrated unto the service of the Most High in things wherewith others may not meddle.’ Moreover, ‘[t]hey which have once received this power may not think to put it off and on like a cloak as the weather serveth; … but let them know which put their hands unto this plough, that once consecrated unto God they are made his peculiar inheritance for ever.’ Suspensions and degradations may ‘stop’ or ‘cut off’ the exercise of this power, but neither 173 they nor even a voluntary renunciation can erase this ‘mark.’

That the spiritual authority so conferred belongs, not to the individual, but to the office so imparted is underscored by the fact that the origin of priestly acts is seen to lie not in the minister, but in God. As Hooker points out, this pertains to the whole of the ministry: ‘as disposers of God’s mysteries, our words, judgments, acts and deeds, are not ours but the Holy Ghost’s.’174 A particular example, however, can be found in the act of absolution. As Andrewes notes, the forgiveness of sins belongs to God alone. It is, however, pronounced by the Church’s ministry, both ‘that there should be no difficulty to shake our faith,’ and ‘because Christ … having taken the nature of man upon him, would honour the nature He had so taken.’ In ordination, therefore, ministers are made συνεργους, that is, co-operatores, “workers together with him” as the Apostle speaketh, to the work of salvation both of themselves and others’ - a ministry which is exercised therefore εν προσωπῳ του Χριστου, “in the person of Christ”’ (Latin, in persona Christi).175 This understanding of absolution is reflected in two sources from the 19th century. Pusey describes confession and absolution, especially private confession to a priest, as foreshadowing the . The priest passes judgment as representing Christ - either to forgive, or to withhold forgiveness - and has his judgment either ratified or nullified by Christ on the last day.176 Likewise, for Wordsworth, the priest in absolution

is like a civil Judge, who does not sit in the judicial tribunal to make laws, but to administer them. He does not pronounce sentence of forgiveness, in his own name, or on his own authority; but in that of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and upon the conditions of repentance and faith prescribed by Christ, and required and ascertained after careful investigation by the Priest in the exercise of his ministry. … It is Christ who raises the sinner from the death of sin; but when He has raised him by His Spirit, his word, or His ministry, He further says to His ministers, ‘Loose him, and let him go.’177

149

For Mascall in the 20th century, emphasizing an eschatological perspective on the Church 178 makes the same point with regard to a wide range of sacramental ministrations.

As the frequent attention to absolution shows, however, character is closely linked with the actual exercise of ministry. Few, admittedly, would go so far as Leslie, who argued that in depriving the nonjuring bishops of their sees, the Crown was, in fact, depriving them of the character of their ministry.179 Generally, as in Hooker, the character of ordination has been seen as indelible, once conferred - a notion which, as Gore notes, emerged ‘without change of principle’ by a natural ‘clearing up of ideas,’ particularly by extension of the principles decided upon in the Donatist controversy and at the Council of Arles.180 The connection between character and the actual functions of the minister however, is also upheld by the Liberal Catholics, who on this point are following Pusey’s protégé, Henry Parry Liddon. Liddon maintains, ‘The difference between clergy and laity “is not a difference in kind” but in function.’ To this Moberly adds some detail: ‘That is to say, of course, not in kind, apart from functional capacity; not in kind except so far as distinctive authority to represent the Church by public performance of her corporate functions, of itself constitutes, in a limited sense, a difference of kind.’181 Liddon continues,

‘[I]f Christian laymen would only believe with all their hearts that they are really priests,… it would then be seen that in the Christian Church the difference between clergy and laity is only a difference of the degree in which certain spiritual powers are conferred; that it is not a difference of kind. Spiritual endowments are given to the Christian layman with one purpose, to the Christian minister with another: the object of the first is personal, that of the second is corporate.’182

Moberly therefore concludes that the significance of ordination is not that some have spiritual powers which others lack, but that the ‘Christian Ministry’ has received the Holy Spirit in order to ‘have the right and the power to represent instrumentally’ the presence of 183 the Holy Spirit in the whole Church.

The priest and the layman do not differ ultimately in kind, as far as their personal prerogatives of spiritual life are concerned. The distinction is of ministerial authority, not of individual privilege. Even the technical word ‘character’ as applied to ministry lends itself easily to mistake. If we assert that Holy Order confers ‘character,’ or that ‘character’ is ‘indelible,’ character in the current sense of the word, the total moral quality of the individual man, is exactly what we do not mean. … The ‘character’ which is conferred, and is indelible, is a status, inherently involving capacities, duties, responsibilities of ministerial life, yet separable from, and, in a sense external

150 to the secret character of the personal self, however much the inner self may 184 be indirectly disciplined or conditioned by it - for good or evil.

For Mascall, however, the conclusion is somewhat different. He, like Leslie and Johnson before him, emphasizes the sacramental role of the priesthood over its pastoral responsibilities, but he does so within a discussion which attempts to distinguish between ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ views of the ministry as focused, respectively, on character and authority. With character and authority thus set in opposition to each other, he concludes that ‘the priest or bishop is not in the first place a ruler but a liturgical celebrant,’ and therefore ‘it would not be altogether inconsistent with the Church’s nature’ - though it might be inconvenient - ‘if its government was entirely exercised by the laity.’185 At first glance, this appears rather at odds with the preceding tradition; Johnson’s argument that sacramental ministry implies jurisdiction poses a particular challenge. A great deal, however, hinges on what is here meant by ‘government,’ a point which is left undeveloped. Mascall follows the Liberal Catholic argument that the Church as a society must have some form of organization, but does so in a way that makes the whole question of the Church’s non- liturgical structure a secondary concern. This is why the point is not discussed further; it also suggests a more administrative definition of ‘government,’ which is theoretically unproblematic, if unlikely to be divorced entirely from the ministerial offices. On the other hand, that Mascall speaks of the bishop or priest as ‘ruler’ seems to suggest that a more holistic pastoral authority is in question, which it would be problematic to divorce from the ministry’s more liturgical roles.

Leaving aside these matters of interpretation, it can at least be said that the High Church tradition has recognized, from its earliest roots, a ministerial ‘character’ imparted in ordination. This character is the inward mark of office which grants to the individual the grace of the order into which that person is ordained. This grace, in turn, makes really and spiritually effective the sacramental and pastoral acts which the ordained are given the authority to perform. This authority, however, is Christ’s, and these acts are done not on the minister’s own initiative, but in persona Christi. Ordination, in conveying both inwardly and outwardly the commission to act on Christ’s behalf, is thus both the expression and the means of carrying on the apostolic succession. The inward and outward commission, therefore, are best seen as parts of a whole, as stated in the Archbishops’ response to Apostolicae Curae:

[The statement] “Receive the Holy Ghost,” with what follows, together with the laying on of hands, confers the general faculties and powers of priesthood, and as is generally said, imprints the character. The second, together with the delivery of the Bible, gives a man the right to offer public service to God and to exercise authority over the Christian people who are to be entrusted to his charge in his own parish or cure. The two commissions taken together include everything essential to the Christian priesthood.186

151 The Priesthood of Christ: The Eucharistic Sacrifice and ‘Sacerdotal’ Priesthood

The High Church Doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice

The previous discussion of what is conferred in ordination necessarily described the High Church understanding of the purpose and function of the ministry. Absolution and the general sacramental ministry of the priesthood receive considerable emphasis; notably absent, however, is any sense of a sacrificing priesthood. This is, of course, a notion criticized in the Articles and absent from the Ordinal - something which was seized upon by Apostolicae Curae as a defect of ‘intent.’187 The standard Anglican responses noted that, according even to Roman theology, the intent of a sacrament is not defined by this or that particular doctrinal position but is simply an intent to ‘do what the Church does’ - the intent clearly indicated in Cranmer’s preface to the ordinal - and that in fact the understanding of the priesthood demanded by the Pope developed only in the medieval period: since the Pope insisted that invalid orders at any historical point invalidated all subsequent orders in that tradition, Anglican respondents noted, he could not insist on the ‘intent’ of a sacrificing priesthood without invalidating all orders ever conferred - Roman included. It is on this point in particular that Moberly concludes, with some irritation, that the bull establishes very well that Romans and Anglicans are different, but nothing at all about the validity of 188 Anglican orders.

This is not to say, however, that discussion of the eucharistic sacrifice, or with it a sacerdotal priesthood, is absent from Anglicanism - far from it. The Archbishops’ response noted this briefly, in language (discussed below) which provides a final statement of the ‘old’ school of High Churchmen on the subject. What can be said, however, is that the Anglican perspective on these doctrines, both before and after the Oxford Movement, is for the most part quite different from the Roman understanding. The traditional Roman understanding of the eucharistic sacrifice, prior to the theological shifts of the 20th century, emphasized the immolation (death or destruction) of the victim as the key element in sacrifice. Corresponding to this - and in particular connection with the celebration of private masses and the notion that repetition of the eucharistic sacrifice accumulates saving merit - the understanding of the priesthood has focused on the performance of the symbolic immolation of Christ in the Eucharist.189 Anglicanism, in contrast, even in the High Church tradition, has been constrained by its formularies to avoid any suggestion of a repeated immolation of Christ; and, as we have seen, has typically favored a pastoral rather than a ritual definition of the priesthood. These factors, as the following discussion will show, have produced within Anglicanism a distinct understanding both of the eucharistic sacrifice and of the ‘sacerdotal’ nature of the priesthood. 152

The formularies have channeled Anglican attitudes on the eucharistic sacrifice away from the Roman definition; but beyond that they have left a certain degree of variety. This is because they are themselves not quite univocal on the subject. Within the Prayer Book’s Service of Holy Communion, the eucharistic canon has, since 1549, emphatically insisted that Christ made ‘one oblation once offered’ as a ‘full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.’ On the other hand, even at the Prayer Book’s furthest remove from the Catholic tradition in 1552, Cranmer nonetheless refers to the Eucharist as a ‘sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving’ and incorporates the Pauline admonition to offer ‘ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto thee’ (Rom. 12:1). The offertory rubrics in particular evolve over time. The 1549 liturgy includes an ‘offertory,’ but the rubrics direct only the preparation of the eucharistic elements, and the following Prayer for the Whole State of the Church only references an offering of prayer. In 1552 (and again in 1559) the offertory is replaced by a collection for the ‘poremen’s boxe,’ but the priest prays for the acceptance of both the congregation’s prayers and their alms. In 1662, the offertory is reinstated, the rubrics direct both the alms and the eucharistic elements to be placed ‘upon the holy Table,’ and the prayer petitions for the acceptance of ‘our alms and oblations,’ as well as the prayers offered.

The chief hurdle, however, for Anglicans who wished to believe in some sort of eucharistic sacrifice, is Article 31. This article not only asserts that the cross alone is ‘the Offering of Christ once made,’ but then goes on to dismiss as ‘‘blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits’ those ‘sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt.’ This can be, and frequently has been, interpreted as a blanket condemnation of any doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice. However, if one pays close attention to the particular statements of the article, one can argue that in fact, it proscribes only a single, very particular understanding of the eucharistic sacrifice. This leaves room for alternatives. A classic example of this analysis is given by Pusey in the introduction to Tract 81, which notes three particular points: (1) that the plural ‘sacrifices of Masses’ indicates specifically a repetitive action; (2) that the article particularly emphasizes the priest as offering Christ; and (3) that this was done ‘for the remission of pain or guilt,’ a reference to the sufferings of purgatory. Thus, on a close reading, the article specifically condemns the late medieval doctrine of the eucharistic sacrifice, according to which Christ was repeatedly re-sacrificed in order to alleviate the suffering of souls in purgatory.190 So, for instance, Palmer concludes that the Article ‘rightly censures that erroneous view of the sacrifice, but does not declare against the doctrine of the eucharistic sacrifice rightly understood.’ Such a ‘right understanding’ of the doctrine, 191 therefore, need not be inconsistent with Protestant (and therefore Anglican) belief.

The ambivalence of the Communion Service, and the varying interpretations of Article 31, have given rise to a range of positions among Anglicans with regard to a eucharistic sacrifice. Waterland, surveying Anglican divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth

153 centuries, notes three positions. The Roman understanding involves material sacrifice. Anglicans, in turn, have either agreed that sacrifice is material, but rejected the notion of a sacrifice in the Eucharist altogether (Hooker is the most notable); or they have agreed that sacrifice is material and that there is a sacrifice in the Eucharist, but attempted to distinguish their doctrine in other respects (of those surveyed here, Johnson falls in this category); or else they have agreed that there is a sacrifice in the Eucharist, but rejected a material understanding of sacrifice in favour of a ‘spiritual sacrifice,’ that is, an act, done ‘with a view to God, to be referred to his glory.’ This is the position which Waterland identifies with Andrewes and Laud, and which he himself believes is correct.192 Nonetheless, the emphasis of the Liturgy and the Articles on the one sacrifice of Christ poses a question to those who wish to set forth a doctrine of the eucharistic sacrifice. If the Eucharist is a sacrifice, in what way does it relate to the sacrifice offered ‘once for all’ upon the cross?

The 16th and 17th Centuries

The insistence on some sort of sacrifice in the Eucharist begins at least as far back as Jewell, as an element in anti-Roman polemic. Against Roman apologists, who held up patristic language concerning the eucharistic sacrifice as a sign that Protestants were abandoning the Catholic Faith, Anglican apologists replied that they did indeed hold a doctrine of the eucharistic sacrifice—and one closer to the position of the early Church than the doctrine held by Rome.193 This insistence, however, required careful technical distinctions in order to square with Protestant convictions. Of particular use here, however, was the role of the Old Testament sacrifices in foreshadowing the one true sacrifice of Christ. So, for Andrewes,

By the same rules as theirs was, by the same may ours be termed a sacrifice. In rigour of speech, neither of them; for to speak after the exact manner of Divinity, there is but one only sacrifice, veri nominis, ‘properly so called,’ that is Christ’s death. And that sacrifice but once actually performed at His death, but ever before represented in figure, from the beginning; and ever since repeated in memory, to the world’s end. That only absolute, all else relative to it, representative of it, operative by it. The Lamb, but once actually slain in fullness of time, but virtually was from the beginning, is and shall be to the end of the world.194

So, as the rites prefiguring the cross may be called sacrifices, the rite that commemorates it ‘must be ejusdem generis,’ of the same kind, and equally a sacrifice.195 Likewise, Laud insists that, despite ceremonial differences between , they are nonetheless of like nature, as the sacraments of each covenant both point to Christ as their substance.196 So too, Cosin holds that the Eucharist is not only analogous to sacrifice, but being done ‘to acknowledge God’s majesty and our misery, and to appease His wrath towards us, to get blessings from Him, to make Christ’s bloody sacrifice effectual unto us,’ it is also ‘formally

154 and truly’ a sacrifice, though ‘[n]ot in strictness and rigour of speech; for so was there never sacrifice, nor ever shall be any, but Christ’s alone;’ indeed, as a ‘representative sacrifice’ of Christ’s death, offered to seek God’s blessings on his Church it may even be called a ‘propitiatory’ sacrifice, though ‘a true, real, proper, and propitiatory sacrificing of Christ … 197 we hold not; believing it to be a false and blasphemous doctrine.’

This insistence on some sort of sacrificial dimension in the Eucharist had liturgical ramifications. Although the prayer of oblation had been removed to the post-communion since 1552, Andrewes’ contemporary Bishop Overall of Norwich unilaterally replaced it within the eucharistic canon in his own personal use.198 Laud’s Scottish Prayer Book of 1637 also restored this prayer to its original place—from whence, in 1789, it entered the American Prayer Book tradition, on the insistence of Samuel Seabury. Despite the fact that no such change occurred in the 1662 Prayer Book, Cosin (who had been Overall’s protégé) continued 199 to maintain that his mentor’s placement of the prayer was the best location for it.

The 17th century in particular, however, saw two particular developments in Anglican handling of the eucharistic sacrifice. Andrewes begins giving sustained consideration to the parallel between the Eucharist and the Passover. For Andrewes, 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 sets forth Christ as the Christian Passover - ‘not every way, nor at every time considered; but as and when He was … “offered up as a sacrifice.”’200 But we are to ‘keep the feast,’ and ‘in truth the Eucharist now in the Gospel is that the Passover was under the Law, the antitype answering to their type of the Paschal lamb.’201 It is both celebration (Greek ‘εορταζωµεν) and feast (Latin epulemur) - celebration in showing forth Christ’s sacrifice, feast in receiving the Holy Communion.202 In the first aspect, therefore, it is indeed a sacrifice. Andrewes even holds it an ‘imagination’ concerning ‘the breaking of bread’—contrary to the second commandment - to suppose that the Eucharist is only a sacrament, and not a sacrifice, because sacrifice is the proper means of renewing a covenant with God.203 The feasting aspect of the Eucharist, however, also has sacrificial dimensions, because it is the ‘applying’ of Christ’s sacrifice to each individual communicant. It brings us ‘[t]o Christ, not every way considered, but as when He was offered. … To the Serpent lift up, thither we must repair, 204 even ad cadaver; we must hoc facere, do that is then done.’

The second development comes from Laud, who distils a tendency in earlier anti- Roman polemic to enumerate multiple sacrifices offered in the eucharistic liturgy into a triad, focused on the liturgical roles of the priest exclusively, of the congregation corporately, and of each worshipper individually.

[A]t and in the Eucharist, we offer up to God three sacrifices: One by the priest only; that is the commemorative sacrifice of Christ’s death, represented in bread broken and wine poured out. Another by the priest and the people jointly; and that is, the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for all the benefits and graces we receive by the precious death of Christ. The third, by every 155 particular man for himself only; and that is, the sacrifice of every man’s body and soul, to serve Him in both all the rest of his life, for this blessing thus 205 bestowed on him.

This three-fold sacrifice in the Eucharist enumerated by Laud would prove significant in two ways. First, Laud’s articulation of, specifically, the ‘commemorative sacrifice,’ would merge with High Church reflection on the Passover to provide a model for explaining the relationship between the sacrificial action of the Eucharist and Christ’s death on the cross. The first Passover was a blood sacrifice to redeem the firstborn of Israel from death, and that the whole nation might be delivered out of bondage; later Passovers were not acts of divine redemption, but were kept as a commemoration of the first Passover, as a means of continuing participation in that one act of redemption. In like fashion, the death of Christ is a redeeming sacrifice, the Eucharist a commemorative sacrifice. Second, Laud’s articulation of three sacrifices in the Eucharist would continue to be the subject of consideration for High Church theologians from Waterland onward. This ongoing reflection would gradually bring out connections between the three offerings, so that by the end of the 19th century they could be presented as a complex whole.

The ‘Orthodox’ Party in the 18th and 19th Centuries

This pattern, joining commemoration to an emphasis on the offerings of the Church, was continued by the orthodox party of the 18th and 19th centuries. So Waterland notes, ‘Christ is our Passover, as the name stands for the lamb: the Eucharist is our Passover, as that same name stands for the feast, service, or solemnity.’206 Likewise Jones: ‘They had the Passover in figure as we have it in truth; for Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; and we keep that feast as a memorial of our redemption, as they commemorated their deliverance from Egypt by the offering of the Paschal Lamb. He was no Jew who did not celebrate the Passover; and he is no Christian who neglects the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.’207 There were, however, several additions. Johnson of Cranbrook notes that not only were both the initial and subsequent Passovers sacrifices, all Old Testament sacrifices pointed to Christ; thus the ‘memorial’ of a sacrifice may too be called a sacrifice.208 Waterland observes that there are three layers to the eucharistic commemoration: it is remembrance—not just of a man, but specifically of the satisfaction made by the God-man; it is a commemoration, which ‘to a bare remembering it superadds the notion of extolling, honouring, celebrating;’ and it is a memorial, both before God, and before man. Before God, ‘tacit allusion to the sacrificial memorials of the Old Testament’ allows the addition that this commemoration may be ‘acceptable and well pleasing, viz. to Almighty God.’ Before man (again like the Passover) it carries on ‘the memory of that great deliverance from the bondage of sin and … to all succeeding generations.’209 Jones, in turn, elaborates on the wider context of the Passover narrative. ‘As they had manna in the wilderness to support them, we have the true bread from heaven; without which we cannot pass through the wilderness of this world to the heavenly Canaan. They added their prayers to the incense of the temple, as we offer up our prayers

156 through the merits of Christ, whereby they are recommended and made acceptable. There 210 was a censer within the , as Christ intercedes for us in the presence of God.’

Particularly in Johnson and Waterland, however, there is extensive technical elaboration on the nature of the eucharistic sacrifice, and it is here that differences emerge. Both agree that the sacraments are covenant (or in Waterland’s language, ‘federal’) rites. Johnson in particular emphasizes Hebrews 9-10: Christ’s sacrifice consecrates both his High Priesthood on our behalf, and the Church, through which he enters into the heavenly Holy of Holies. This focus on the ritual dimension of covenant participation, however, leads him to an emphasis on the ‘putting away of sin’ as the removal of ritual and legal disabilities imposed by violations of the covenant, rather than the cleansing of actual sin. In this context, the Eucharist parallels the Old Testament sin offering as the means of renewing covenant access to God.211 Waterland, in contrast, is more circumspect. Christ’s death is a ‘federal rite’ between God and the new humanity of which Christ is the head (although this classification ‘appears to be too low and too diminutive a name’); the Eucharist fulfils the same role with regard to individuals. He declines, however, to draw exact parallels between 212 the Old and New Covenants.

Similarly, both agree that the eucharistic elements are symbols of Christ’s body and blood, although (as Johnson notes) the elements are not ‘such cold and imperfect types, as those before and under the Law.’213 But it is here that the difference, noted above, between ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’ sacrifices shows itself. Both agree, again, that a ‘spiritual’ sacrifice is set primarily in opposition not to a material sacrifice per se, but to a ‘carnal’ understanding (particularly with regard to the Old Testament types).214 But, whereas for Johnson, the eucharistic sacrifice focuses on the offering of the elements as symbols of Christ’s body and blood, Waterland’s belief that a sacrifice is fundamentally an action, not an object, eliminates this as a possibility. Johnson argues that the great sacrifice made by Christ cannot be reduced to the cross, because it ‘was not finished … until He entered the Holy of Holies, even Heaven itself;’ yet if Christ’s sacrifice is extended after the Crucifixion to the Ascension it may also be extended the shorter time beforehand to the Last Supper, where ‘He actually yielded and consigned Himself up to’ suffering, ‘before He was under any appearance of necessity and compulsion.’215 The Eucharist, as a memorial of this sacrificial action, is therefore not ‘another’ sacrifice apart from Christ’s.216 For Waterland, on the other hand, a symbolic offering of Christ in the Eucharist would conflate the sacrificial and sacramental aspects of the sacrament. Christ ‘is not the matter or the subject of our sacrifices, but the Mediator of them: we offer not him, but we offer, what we do offer, by him.’ Indeed, ‘no one has any authority to offer Christ as a sacrifice (whether really or symbolically) but Christ himself. Such a sacrifice is his sacrifice, not ours; offered for us, and not by us, to God the Father.’ Rather, the eucharistic sacrifice is the self-offering the Church: ‘we do not offer Christ 217 to God in the Eucharist, but God offers Christ to us, in return for our offering ourselves.’

157 Despite this divergence, they both follow Andrewes with regard to the effects of the sacrifice. Thus Johnson observes, that despite the unity between the Eucharist and Christ’s offering, ‘we are not to do it in all respects, with the same ends and designs that He did. … We do not offer the body of Christ in order to It’s being crucified; but as a memorial of It’s having been thus devoted to crucifixion, or mactation, now long since past.’218 The Eucharist, considered as a sacrifice, is indeed both ‘propitiatory’ (‘to procure Divine blessings’) and ‘expiatory,’ (for ‘pardon of sin’); but it has both these qualities only ‘by virtue of its principle, the grand Sacrifice.’219 Waterland likewise allows that while there is no properly expiatory or propitiatory sacrifice but that of Christ, the Eucharist can 220 nonetheless be called both, in a strictly qualified or ‘improper’ sense.

Waterland, however, because of his emphasis on the self-offering of the Church, is able to include under this heading a number of other sacrifices: the sacrifice of alms and oblations, of prayer, of praise and thanksgiving, of penitence, of ourselves individually and of the whole Church collectively, of converts and penitents by their pastors, and finally ‘[t]he sacrifice of faith and hope, and self-humiliation, in commemorating the grand sacrifice, and resting finally upon it.’221 Any of these offerings would suffice to make the Eucharist a true sacrifice; yet in the end they must be viewed as parts of a whole. Thus, ‘all the Gospel sacrifices’ may be summed up ‘under two: one of which is our Lord’s own sacrifice upon the Cross; and the other the Church’s offering herself. The first of these is represented and participated in the Eucharist, the latter is executed.’222 And yet, in the end, even these two are not entirely separate: our self-oblations, as ‘secondary sacrifices,’ are added to the commemoration of Christ’s sacrifice, ‘not to heighten the value of it, which is already infinite, but to render ourselves capable of the benefits of it.’ But the grain and drink offerings, though added to the daily sacrifice of a lamb, were accounted as a single sacrifice with it. ‘So may the sacrifice of Christ be commemorated, and our own sacrifices therewith presented, be considered as one sacrifice of the head and members, in union together,’ and our self- 223 offering is made acceptable to God in Christ.

Despite the polarization between Johnson and Waterland, later High Churchmen appear to have drawn from both sides of the preceding tradition. Jones, like Johnson, explicitly describes the offered elements as symbolically ‘the holy oblation of Christ’s body and blood;’ but adds that the offering of ‘ourselves and our worldly substance’ should ‘be consecrated with the offering of the eucharistic sacrifice; that we, and all we have, may be acceptable and blessed.’224 Palmer likewise sees an oblation of the elements in the rubrical direction that they be placed on the ‘holy Table,’ but combines this with a list of additional sacrifices clearly inspired by Waterland.225 Palmer, however, represents a tendency among the later generations of ‘orthodox’ churchmen to lose sight of the unity between the offering of Christ and the self- offering of the Church. This can be seen again in the bishops of the Wordsworth family. The elder Wordsworth enumerates sacrifices of alms and oblations, of praise and thanksgiving, of the individual communicants, and of the Church corporately, all

158 directly borrowed from Waterland. He then adds ‘a sacrificium commemorativum, commemorative of the death and sacrifice of Christ; a sacrificium repraesentativum, which represents and pleads His meritorious sufferings to God; a sacrificium impetrativum, which applies them to the worthy receiver,’ which were not included in Waterland’s list, though they are not distant from his thought.226 His son, writing on behalf of the Archbishops in response to Apostolicae Curae, produces a similar statement:

[F]irst we offer the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; then next we plead and represent before the Father the sacrifice of the cross, and by it we confidently entreat remission of sins and all other benefits of our Lord’s Passion for all the whole Church; and lastly we offer the sacrifice of ourselves to the Creator of all things which we have already signified by the oblation of His creatures. This whole action, in which the people has necessarily to take part with the Priest, we are accustomed to call the 227 Eucharistic sacrifice.

Thus, while Waterland’s articulation of the several sacrifices included in the eucharist appears to have been influential even towards the end of the 19th century, it is carried on without the sense of organic unity between the representative or commemorative offering of Christ and the self-offering of the Church, which had begun to develop in Waterland and Jones. Development of that theme would come, instead, from the Tractarians and their successors.

The Oxford Movement and Anglo-Catholicism

The Tracts for the Times began in 1833 with the topic of the apostolic succession, but by 1836, they began to turn towards other matters, including sacramental theology. Tract 81, issued in 1837, collected excerpts from earlier Anglican writers on the topic of the eucharistic sacrifice. It does not take sides on earlier internal debates, and includes sources supporting both ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’ understandings of the eucharistic offering—though Waterland is notably absent, despite the publication of his collected works in 1823. The tract’s introduction, written by Pusey, presents a thoroughly traditional account of the Passover’s eucharistic implications as a ‘commemorative sacrifice,’ before going on to give a polemical account of the doctrine’s history in the English Church. Pusey holds that the medieval error regarding the eucharistic sacrifice was brought about by the two erroneous Roman doctrines of transubstantiation and purgatory; the Church of England being free of these doctrines was therefore free to hold the correct understanding of the eucharistic sacrifice. Additionally, since the Eucharist ‘pleads the sacrifice’ of Christ on behalf of the whole Church, he concludes that it must therefore, in some sense, be beneficial for the faithful departed - though just how is a mystery of God. 228 The same argument is presented in shorter form at the end of the century by Staley.229

159 The more significant development of the doctrine, however, comes not from Pusey’s direct argumentation, but from a recurring set of imagery which presents the whole Christian life as sacrificial.230 By implication, the eucharistic offering is the focal point of such a life, but Pusey does not spell out the connection. This is left, rather, to the younger Liberal Catholic school. They, like Pusey, keep their feet firmly planted in the older tradition. Gore emphasizes the commemorative aspect, and both he and Moberly reject a propitiation in the ‘strict’ or ‘proper’ sense in the Eucharist, emphasizing its dependence on the work of Christ.231 Like Johnson, both Gore and Moberly ground their thought in Hebrews 9-10, arguing that ‘though Calvary be the indispensable preliminary, yet is it not Calvary taken apart, not Calvary quite so directly as the eternal self-presentation in Heaven of the risen and ascended Lord, which is the true consummation of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.’232 However, they take this in a different direction: Johnson had argued that it was not only the death of Christ that comprised his sacrifice; Gore and Moberly argue that sacrifice is not concerned (primarily) with death at all, but with the offering of life. Christ ‘is a Priest forever, not as it were by a perpetual series of acts of commemoration of a death that is past, but by the 233 eternal presentation of a life which eternally is the “life that died.”’

It is not the death itself which is acceptable to the God of life: but the vital self- identification with the holiness of God, the perfect self-dedication and self-surrender which is represented, in a life that has sinned, by a voluntary acceptance of penitential or penal death. It is the life as life, not the death as death; it is the life which has been willing to die, the life which has passed through death, and been consecrated in dying, the life in which death is a moral element, perpetually and inalienably present, but still the life, which is 234 acceptable to God.

The significance, then, of the New Covenant inaugurated by Christ’s sacrifice, is that ‘He has given’ us ‘“freedom of approach.” That is to say … the life of sacrifice as it belongs to 235 accepted sons and not to trembling slaves.’

The eucharistic sacrifice is thus the self-offering of both the Christian and of the whole Church, as grounded in the self-offering of Christ. ‘In it,’ individually, ‘each Christian has taken up his own life, his body and soul, and offered it as a holy, lively, and reasonable sacrifice unto God,’ yet because of his unworthiness, he must also plead before the Father, ‘as the source of his own hope and his power of self-sacrifice, the one complete offering made for all mankind.’236 Yet it is only the self-offering of the individual Christian because it is the self-offering of the Church. Gore gives as ‘first fruits’ included in the eucharistic offering a list nearly identical to Waterland’s.237 But whereas Waterland only offered a hint towards a more organic unity between the Church’s offering and that of Christ, the Liberal Catholic school is more emphatic. ‘[W]hat Christ is, the Church, which is Christ’s mystical body, must also be,’ so ‘[t]he sacrificial priesthood of the Church is really her identification

160 with’—and therefore her dependence upon— ‘the priesthood and the sacrifice of Christ.’238 This is, however, not only enacted outwardly in the Eucharist; it must be an inward spiritual reality. ‘[O]ur Lord cannot be our representative priest and sacrifice in an effective sense unless we go on to share His life. … We must share it both actually and morally. Actually we must become “of His body,” and morally we must share in the life of His Spirit. … Only in Christ can we offer and plead Christ.’239 Thus united to Christ’s sacrifice, however, the Eucharist becomes the ‘living self-offering of the Church in Christ, united afresh in one 240 body to God through the communion in Christ’s body and blood.’

Whereas the sources surveyed so far demonstrate a development in working out a fairly consistent tradition, the 20th century sees a divergence from these earlier patterns. Writing in Essays Catholic and Critical, Will Spens consciously draws on the Roman theologian Maurice de la Taille to argue that sacrifice consists in the death of a victim, marked as a sacrifice by an accompanying ritual. The institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper is the ‘ritual’ accompanying the death of Christ, and gains its sacrificial nature from this relation, not from its commemorative nature.241 Similarly, Eric Mascall retains the Liberal Catholic emphasis on the Church’s participation in the self-oblation of Christ, but dismisses the earlier tradition of the ‘commemorative sacrifice’ as vague, preferring to dialog with de la Taille and later Roman theologians Vonier and Masure.242 These writers mark a turn in the Roman tradition from the traditional emphasis on ritual repetition of Christ’s death to a theory of sacramental signification relying on Christ’s institution.243 Thus, in a fashion similar to Spens, Mascall argues that Christ ‘instituted the ritual sacrifice not by doing something to the sacrificial rites of the Old Dispensation but by giving a sacrificial character to a rite … which previously was not in the strict sense sacrificial at all, by declaring that the cup of the Last Supper was the cup of the New Covenant in his blood.’244 The result of this is that, despite similarities to the Liberal Catholics, the orientation is reversed. Whereas for Gore and Moberly, the eucharistic offering gathered up the life of the Church (think, for instance, of Gore’s discussion of the first fruits), for Spens and Mascall the focus on the ritual nature of sacrifice entails that the Eucharist generates (rather than expresses) the priestly and sacrificial nature of the Church, which then flows out from the eucharistic celebration into ‘every aspect of human life, as Christ’s members take him with them.’245

The Consecrated Priesthood

This, then, is the extent of the High Church tradition regarding the eucharistic sacrifice. The question remains, however, as to how this affected the High Church understanding of the ministry. This is often discussed in connection with the idea of a ‘sacerdotal’ priesthood. One can have, however, a ‘sacerdotal’ ministry even without a sacrifice: the Latin word ‘sacerdos’ simply refers to a person who is ‘consecrated.’ At the time

161 of the Reformation, it was this general use of the term (rather than the specific sacrificial associations later attached to it) which was common, as shown in the Articles of Religion. The Latin of Article 31 uses the term in repudiating the medieval view of the eucharistic sacrifice; but Article 32 is titled De conjugio sacerdotum, and the following text of the Article makes plain that ‘sacerdos’ is here being used neutrally as a general term for ‘bishops, priests, and deacons.’ This usage is supported by the rendering of ‘priest’ as ‘sacerdos’ in the Latin Prayer Book issued under Elizabeth I. Indeed, the translation practice in sixteenth-century English was to render Greek hiereus as ‘priest,’ presbyteros as ‘elder,’ so even the use of the term ‘priest’ in English texts (despite its etymological origin in the Greek presbyteros) is 246 supportive of a ‘sacerdotal’ view of the ministry, at least in this general sense.

Hooker provides further evidence of this usage. He is clear that ‘sacrifice is now no part of the church ministry,’ but he allows on patristic evidence that there may be an analogy between sacrificial and eucharistic offices.247 This does not, however, rule out the Church having ‘priests.’ The term ‘priest’ (Hooker is discussing ‘ιερευς, the Greek equivalent to sacerdos) properly refers to ‘him whose mere function or charge is the service of God.’ It is, moreover, used in practice to identify this or that member of the clergy, without reference to any particular theological concept. However, because ‘the most eminent part both of 248 Heathenish and Jewish’ priestly offices is sacrificial, he prefers to use the term ‘presbyter.’

A ‘sacerdotal’ view of the ministry, then, does not necessarily imply belief in a sacrificing priesthood—only that the ordained are ‘consecrated’ to God’s service, or (as Hooker put it in his discussion of the character of ordination) that the clergy are ‘separated’ from the laity for the particular work of the ministry. On the other hand, the existence of a doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice in a large part of the High Church tradition suggests that, for those who hold such a doctrine, a connection with the priestly office is not completely out of view. In what ways, then, is the doctrine of the priesthood shaped by High Church understandings of sacrifice?

From Andrewes to Johnson

Among the first generations following the Reformation, with anti-Roman controversy still in full swing, it appears that the topic of a connection between the eucharistic sacrifice and the Christian priesthood was an area to exercise restraint. So, as we have seen, Andrewes draws extensive parallels between the Old and New Testaments with regard to the structure of the ministry, and with regard to the question of sacrifice. Although such an approach suggests a great deal, he does not, in any of the material surveyed, specifically elaborate the consequences of his perspective for the understanding of the ministry. At most, we can infer that just as he says of the sacrifices of the two covenants, their respective priesthoods are ‘ejusdem generis,’ of the same kind - both of them dependent upon, and pointing to, the one true priesthood of Christ. Laud, a generation later, is barely less restrained. Drawing from the relation of Melchizedek and Christ as type

162 fulfilment (e.g. Heb. 7), he argues that in like fashion ‘the priesthood of Aaron under the Law was but a shadow of the priesthood of Christ under the Gospel. And therefore the priesthood which is now, ought in all privileges to exceed that under the Law, inasmuch as the antitype and the body is of more worth than the type and the shadow.’249

A more complete exposition comes at last in Leslie (who, curiously enough, does not give lengthy discussion to the eucharistic sacrifice in its own right). He unreservedly follows the parallel given in 1 Clement between Christian orders and the Levitical ministry, and describes kingship and priesthood as fundamentally identical under both covenants.250 Baptism and the Eucharist correspond to circumcision and the sacrificial rites of the Old Testament (though they are greater, and means of grace), as ‘seals of the new covenant, … as commemorations and exhibitions of the sacrifice of Christ;’ ‘the priests of the gospel,’ therefore, ‘are as truly and properly priests, empowered by Christ to seal covenants in his name with the people, as the priests under the law.’251 It is the role of the priest to ‘offer’ - in the Eucharist, on behalf of the people - the prayers of the people, together with alms and oblations, and ‘ourselves, our souls and bodies’ (‘another sacrifice … which the church of Rome has forgot.’) Indeed,

[W]e may be said to offer the body and blood of Christ, while through the merits of his passion we intercede for mercy, and offer them to interpose betwixt the justice of God and our sins.

It is in this manner that Christ does now offer them in heaven, and is for ever a Priest, though he is not to be sacrificed again.

Thus his priests do execute the same office and priesthood on earth which he does in heaven, and this makes them to be priests in the most strict and proper sense, even beyond the offering of the typical sacrifices before his 252 coming in the flesh.

Similarly, for Johnson, the celebration of the Eucharist is Christ’s action, though done ‘representatively, by His Priests … He offers Himself in the Eucharist … by the hands and mouths of His ministers.’253 The priesthood of the Church, therefore, is an extension of Christ’s own Priesthood; it was consecrated, as he was himself, by his self-oblation.254 For both Leslie and Johnson, the apostolic succession is central to this understanding of the ministry, as the means of conveying the divine ‘power of attorney’ to ‘seal’ the divine covenants (Leslie) or the priestly consecration of the minister (Johnson). Johnson, however, notes that the laity also share in the eucharistic sacrifice by bringing the material offerings of Bread and Wine, joining in the prayers offered by the priest, and in eating and drinking ‘a portion of the Sacrifice.’255

163 Waterland and the ‘Orthodox’ Party

The themes established by Leslie and Johnson continued on in the ‘orthodox’ party of the 18th and 19th centuries. Waterland relies heavily on the priest’s role in representing Christ, even making the lay offering of the elements an argument against a symbolic sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist:

If the thing symbolically offered in the Eucharist were Christ himself, then the offerer or offerers must stand in the place of Christ. … Then not only the Priests, but the whole Church, celebrating the Eucharist, must symbolically represent the person of Christ, and stand in his stead: a notion which has no countenance in Scripture or antiquity, but is plainly contradicted by the whole turn and tenor of the ancient Liturgies, as well as by the plain nature and reason of the 256 thing.’

Jones, similarly, argues that the ‘commemorative Sacrifice of the New Testament,’ ‘can be offered only by a priest: and all the world cannot make a priest,’ but only God. Like Leslie, he argues from the example of Melchizedek that the priesthood of the gospel, which Christ began, and continued and perpetuated, with its offering of bread and wine, is the only true priesthood; earlier than the priesthood of the law in time, and superior to it in dignity.’257 In common with both Leslie and Johnson, Jones connects this his understanding of the priesthood to the importance of the apostolic succession. ‘The ministers of the New Testament were ordained by Christ himself; from whom the authority descended to others, 258 and shall reach through a variety of hands, to the end of the world.’

The inclusion of the Church in the offering, noted by Johnson, is also continued. Despite his insistence that ‘the Church as a whole’ does not represent Christ, Waterland nonetheless agrees that ‘Christians, at large, are priests unto God: for every one that sacrificeth is so far a priest.’259 Similarly, the younger Wordsworth emphasizes that ‘the people has 260 necessarily to take part with the Priest’ in the ‘whole action’ of the eucharistic sacrifice.

It would be easy to set these two positions against each other as conflicting, but in fact there is not as much tension here as it might seem. As Perceval notes, an ordained priesthood does not prevent the ‘body of Christians’ being a ‘royal priesthood,’ as these are ‘the words which Moses applied to the whole people of Israel; among whom the ministry was confined to the tribe of Levi and the priesthood to the family of Aaron.’261 So, for Waterland, the priest is the ‘mouth’ of the people in making their offering, ‘authorized by God so to be.’262 Underlying the harmony of the priestly body of the Church and the particular priesthood of the ministry, however, is the notion of a sacerdotal priesthood. As the elder Wordsworth argues, the clergy, κληρος, are ‘a lot or portion, because they are allotted and consecrated to God, or because He and His Church is their lot and inheritance.’ The whole Church indeed is ‘allotted and consecrated to God,’ and all Christians are in some

164 sense priests, ‘consecrated to His service.’ All Christians are members of Christ, our High Priest; the whole Church is a temple to God; and each soul is an altar to God. But as a matter of order and ‘the special ministration of God’s Word and Sacraments,’ clergy are ‘separated for the work whereunto they are called.’263 So, for Waterland ‘[T]he proper officers, who minister in holy things, and who offer up to God both the sacrifices and sacrificers, are priests in a more eminent and emphatical sense,’ and the priest’s offering of the gathered 264 church in the Eucharist is a ‘sacerdotal devoting [of] all the faithful joining it.’

This , however, is defined by the actions assigned to the priest. Despite his aversion to a symbolic offering of Christ in the Eucharist, Waterland follows Leslie’s pattern in describing the priest as offering the commemoration of ‘the same sacrifice here below, which Christ our High Priest commemorates above,’ together with the ‘handing up’ of the ‘prayers and services of Christians’ and the ‘offering up to God’ of ‘all the faithful who are under their care.’265 The more interesting development here, however, comes in the work of the elder Wordsworth, who particularly emphasizes ‘the act of the Minister praying for the people, and presenting their prayers to God,’ defined as ‘sacerdotal intercession.’266 Derived from this is the priest’s ‘sacerdotal benediction,’ in pronouncing blessing, exemplified in the New Testament by the frequent pronouncing of ‘peace’ - both Christ’s pronouncement to the apostles, and the apostles to the churches - and exercised in the contemporary priesthood through confirmation and ordination (for bishops) as well as in the Eucharist.267 Wordsworth is sensitive to the question of whether ‘all Priestly Intercession’ has been ‘superseded and taken away by the Intercession of Christ.’ However, while ‘[t]here is indeed to us but One Mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus,’ he maintains that at the same time ‘the intercession of His Ministers, acting in His name, and by His authority and appointment, may be considered to be, in a certain sense, His act and His intercession.’268 The sacerdotal ministry of the priesthood, therefore, in offering to God the united prayers of his people, is an instrument for the unity of the Church.269 Nonetheless, Wordsworth’s son would argue that the sacerdotal role is not the principal aspect of the priesthood. ‘[T]he pastoral office’ is ‘more peculiar to Presbyters, seeing that it represents the attitude of God towards men;’ whereas ‘offering, as a holy priesthood, spiritual sacrifices to God’ belongs rather to ‘the whole people,’ because ‘the Priest, to whom the dispensing of the Sacraments and especially the consecration of the Eucharist is entrusted, must always do the service of the altar with the people standing by and sharing it with him.’270 The English ordinal, therefore, represents a restoration of ancient and apostolic emphases with regard to pastoral care, preaching, and accountability, as opposed to later dilutions which reduced the ministerial office to a sole emphasis on sacrifice and absolution.271

The Oxford Movement and Anglo-Catholicism

The Church, however, is the body of Christ. Pointing out the relevance of this reality for the present discussion was the task of the later Tractarians and Liberal Catholics. What

165 Christ is, the Church is in him; what Christ does, the Church does in him. Yet at the same time, the Church as a whole has its particular members, each with their own role to play. So, as Christ is our Great High Priest, the Church shares in his priesthood. So Liddon, as we have seen, argues that the laity should ‘believe with all their hearts that they are really priests.’ ‘The Christian layman of early days,’ he supposes, was ‘penetrated through and through by the sacerdotal idea, spiritualized and transfigured as it was by the Gospel.’272 The Liberal Catholics carried on this line of argument. Christ is a priest; therefore the Church, as his body, ‘carries on this priestly work on earth’ as ‘the source of blessing to mankind’ and in her perpetual intercession and self- offering for humanity.’ Each Christian exercises this priesthood by serving God in every aspect of life, but the corporate priesthood of the Church is expressed in worship, particularly the Eucharist.273 For this, the priesthood of the Church has ‘public representatives;’ indeed, the one body of the Church ‘has its organs, whose task it is to make offerings and to stand before it as the types of self-consecration.’274 ‘[T]he ministry … is the hand which offers and distributes; it is the voice which consecrates and pleads.’275 Thus, ‘we can call them priests in a special sense; for they give themselves up in a deeper way to the service of God; they are specially trained and purified for His service; 276 they are put as representative of the whole Church in a way in which no other is.’

At this point, however, there is a slight divergence. Lock maintains that ‘[a]s the Church stands in relation to the world, so’ ministers ‘stand to the Church’ in intercession, self-offering, and as means of blessing.277 Staley goes a step further, arguing, ‘What Jesus was to His Apostolic band, what the priest is to the faithful laity, that the layfolk are to the world outside the Church. Their priesthood is to the world.’278 But it is not, principally, in the Eucharist: there, the priest is the principal offerer, and ‘the laity co-operates with him.’279 In effect then, the priesthood of Christ is mediated to the Church by the eucharistic priesthood of the ministry. For Moberly, Gore, and Ramsey, on the other hand, there is no ‘vicarious priesthood’ between God and the laity.280 Indeed, ‘The ordained priests are priestly only because it is the Church’s prerogative to be priestly; and because they are, by ordination, specialized and empowered to exercise ministerially and organically the prerogatives which are the prerogatives of the body as a whole.’281 This leads them to argue that ‘the priesthood of the layman is no merely verbal concession’ but ‘a doctrine of importance, essential … for a due understanding of the ministry.’ On this point they follow Liddon, who believes that the difficulties of sacerdotalism stem not from too high a view of the ministry, but too low a view of the laity. When the laity are not recognized as priests, the claim of spiritual authority for the ministry provokes ‘the sense of … an unbearable imposture.’ ‘But if this can be changed; if the temple of the layman’s soul can be again made a scene of spiritual worship, he will no longer fear lest the ministerial order should confiscate individual liberty. The one 282 priesthood will be felt to be a natural extension of the other.’

Such a close connection between the priesthood of the whole Church and of the ordained ministry translates naturally to an emphasis on the pastoral dimension of the

166 ministerial priesthood. Moberly emphasizes that the priestly nature of the ministry extends to both the liturgical and the pastoral roles of the minister; correspondingly, the medieval neglect of ‘service to, or self-sacrifice for, the people’ as part of the priesthood, is one-sided and flawed.283 The Liberal Catholic model, however, was more fully developed by Gore, who adds to it the consideration of Christ’s three-fold office as prophet, priest, and king.284 The Church shares in each: as it is prophetic, ‘it is to be the divine teacher of its own members and of the nations;’ as it is priestly, it has ‘the full enjoyment of His reconciliation and is the instrument’ of it to the world; and as it is kingly, ‘it is a royal priesthood, like the people of the old covenant, but in a far deeper sense, because it partakes of the regal character of Christ.’285 All this is immediately the property of the Church; yet as the ministry derives its nature from the Church, it is in a more specific sense prophetic, priestly and kingly—in teaching, in reconciling (especially in baptism, ordination, and absolution), and in their pastoral leadership and discipline of the Church; though ‘the character of this rule of the pastors in the church was to be determined by the character of Christ’s kingship’ - 286 humility.

Later in the 20th century, Gore’s model was developed still further by Michael Ramsey. As in Gore, the priest ‘is to be a “beacon” of the Church’s pastoral, prophetic and priestly concern.’ But, beyond ‘displaying’ the Church’s nature, he also ‘enables’ its work, by his training and work; and ‘besides displaying and enabling he also involves the whole Church in his own activity. When he visits a sick person, for instance, it is not only the visit of a kind Christian; it is the Church visiting. Similarly the priest can be the Church praying, the Church caring for the distressed, the Church preaching.’ This unfolds, however, in four ways. As a ‘man of theology,’ he instructs the laity, but also listens to them, in order to help the whole Church witness to God’s truth across the various spheres of life. As a ‘minister of reconciliation,’ the priest has a role in keeping alive the reality of sin and forgiveness, and in bearing witness to the central reality of the cross. As a ‘man of prayer,’ the priest is not distinct from the laity—indeed, many laity will pray better—but he nonetheless prays as theologian and reconciler, and focuses the Church’s prayer: ‘In him the Church’s prayer is expressed in strength, and it thereby becomes the stronger.’ And as ‘man of the Eucharist,’ he represents not only the local Church, but ‘the Holy Catholic Church down the ages,’ and 287 points symbolically to the events of the Cross and Resurrection in history.

Other perspectives in the twentieth century, however, have expressed more reservation about the priesthood of the laity. Spens and Mascall both present the priestly ministry as an organ of the priestly body of the Church, but introduce a greater distinction between clergy and laity. So, for Spens, the eucharistic offering is ‘performed by Him through the members of His mystical body,’ and Christ is therefore ‘Himself the Priest in the Eucharist, no less than at the Last Supper.’ But the Church’s participation in Christ’s priesthood flows through the ministry: ‘because His ministers are also our representatives we participate in his sacerdotal act.’288 Mascall, on the other hand, argues from the differentiated

167 unity of the Trinity that there is a special ‘mode’ of participating in Christ’s priesthood which is particular to the ministry.289 Though the Church is priestly, this does not entail a ‘priesthood of the laity.’ Rather, it is only the ordained minister who participates individually in the priesthood of Christ.290

The High Church tradition, therefore, holds to a doctrine of the eucharistic sacrifice and to a sacerdotal understanding of the priesthood. However, as this survey has shown, there are three distinctions which can be drawn within these broad commonalities. Is the eucharistic sacrifice the self-offering of the Church in conjunction with the commemoration of Christ, or is it more narrowly focused on the symbolic or sacramental representation of Christ’s sacrifice? Is the priesthood of the ministry expressive of the whole Church’s priesthood, or is it the channel of a priestly nature to the life of the Church? Again, is the sacerdotal character of the ministry in large part intercessory, and subordinate to a broadly pastoral model of priesthood; or is it more narrowly focused on the priest’s role in celebrating the Eucharist? The answers to these questions tend to correlate in a certain way: an understanding of the eucharistic sacrifice which focuses on the Church’s self-oblation allows for a more expressive and intercessory understanding of the priesthood, while a more narrowly symbolic understanding of the eucharistic offering fits naturally with a more strictly liturgical and consecration-focused model of the priesthood. Thus, within the High Church tradition, a theologian’s approach to the subject of the eucharistic sacrifice indicates what may broadly be termed either a ‘pastoral’ or a ‘liturgical’ understanding of the priesthood. This is not meant to suggest that a ‘pastoral’ focus is non-liturgical, or that a ‘liturgical’ model leads one to be unpastoral! Rather, it asks which is the principal motive, expressed in the other: does the liturgy express the Christian life of the congregation, or does the life of the congregation flow from the liturgy? There is a tension between these two perspectives; but at the same time it should be acknowledged that they express complementary truths: Christ is immediately present in the Church, and because it shares his life, it can in him stand before the Father without shame or fear; yet its life comes from God alone. It may be noted, that although Anglicans who believe in a eucharistic sacrifice have been restrained, for historical reasons, about connecting it with the role of the priest in persona Christi, this is an expression (though not a necessary consequence) of that doctrine. Christ is the head of the body, both the source of its life and the one who intercedes as one of us. If the priest is defined either by its intercessory or sacramental role, it is necessarily as a representative of Christ. And this, in turn, requires having received authority to do so.

The apostolic succession, therefore, is the foundation of the High Church understanding of the ministry. Authority has been received from Christ, through his bishops, to act on his behalf in the life of the Church. Those who receive authority, however, are also accountable to those who give it to them; this is not a power which serves the whim of the minister, but one which requires obedience to Christ. The authority conveyed is not merely an outward or temporal power. Rather, the acts of the minister have real spiritual effect, because of the grace given to the priestly office. This office, and the spiritual authority given

168 to it, are imparted to the minister as an indelible mark, or ‘character,’ in ordination. The grace that comes through the minister’s acts, however, belongs neither to the minister nor the office, but to Christ. Thus, the priest is said to act in persona Christi. This has been especially emphasized with regard to the exercise of priestly absolution. Nonetheless, for those who recognize a ‘sacerdotal’ element in the Christian priesthood, that too is representative of Christ.

169 The Historical Argument for the Apostolic Succession

The principle concern of the paper as a whole is to set forth the Anglican High Church tradition’s view of Holy Order. The initial chapter on the apostolic succession, therefore, presented that doctrine with an eye towards the principles involved, and the way they have shaped the High Church understanding of the Church and the ministry. The apostolic succession, however, is not merely a doctrine but also the historical claim that there is a direct line of succession through the bishops of the Church to the apostles, and ultimately to Christ. The argument for this historical case, as it has evolved through the High Church tradition, is presented here.

In the New Testament, the terms ‘bishop’ and ‘presbyter’ are used to refer to the same individuals. This virtual synonymity is universally accepted in the High Church tradition. As we have seen, however, the High Church argument is not concerned with the use of words, but with the structure of authority in the Church. Hooker notes that terminology shifts easily, especially in the formative years of a movement; it is therefore ‘a lame and an impotent kind of reasoning’ to suppose that the interchangeability of ‘bishop’ and ‘presbyter’ in the New Testament precludes the existence of an episcopal office in that time.291 Andrewes likewise maintains that although ‘the authority and power was ever distinct’ in the apostles and bishops, ‘in the beginning regard was not had to distinction of names.’292 Leslie, a century later, further notes that terminology alone cannot, after all, tell the whole story: a presbyter is not the same as an alderman, despite their titles meaning the same thing!293 What is at stake, then, is not terminology, but the way in which the itinerant ministry of the apostles is connected to the emergence of the monarchical episcopate (the rule of a single bishop over a diocese).

The argument, then, in the older tradition, is concerned primarily to discern the succession of figures who appear to have been given this higher authority of oversight. The most obvious, of course, are the Apostles themselves, who (in Hooker’s language) functioned as ‘bishops at large,’ without geographic boundaries.294 Also ubiquitously cited are Timothy and Titus, who were commissioned by Paul as ‘apostolic ambassadors or legates’—whatever their actual titles or lack thereof—with authority over other elders in their respective churches, including (importantly) the authority to ordain (Tit. 1:5, 1 Tim. 295 5:22).

Similarly, the ‘angels of the churches’ in Revelation 1-3 receive frequent attention.296 It is worth noting, that a feature of these passages obscured by modern translations, but clear in both the Greek and in the Authorized Version, is an alteration between singular and plural pronouns in Christ’s address to the churches—generally, the opening comments (often concerning church discipline) are addressed to the single ‘angel,’ while remarks concerning the whole community (for example, warning of impending persecution) are addressed to the 170 church in the plural. The reading given by this tradition, then, sees the ‘angels’ as individuals specifically charged with safeguarding the faith and discipline of their respective churches.

The transition from the ordering of the twelve and the seventy to that of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, however, evolved over time, and here there are varying views of just how the development occurred. For some, it is purely verbal. Perceval, for instance, looks for other names by which early bishops may have gone - for instance, the occasions on which ‘apostle’ seems to be used to apply to others than the twelve (e.g. 1 Cor. 12:28) as well as the ‘angels’ of Revelation.297 In a similar vein, Christopher Wordsworth argues that ‘presbyter’ in the New Testament is a general term of dignity, whereas ‘bishop’ denotes the specific office of an ‘overlooker of (many) pastors.’ The eventual distinction between the 298 two as distinct offices is simply a shift in usage.

Among those who see a more structural development however - including Hooker, Andrewes, and Palmer - the general model put forth (with some variation as to particulars) is that of a gradual localization of episcopal oversight. Churches were initially founded by the apostles, and placed under the authority of local colleges of presbyters.299 The apostles exercised oversight non-geographically as a part of their itinerant ministry, in which they were assisted by a particular group of traveling assistants (possibly itinerant presbyters) - speculatively, the ‘evangelists’ mentioned in the Pauline epistles.300 As the Church grew, attending to local disturbances became too much for the apostles themselves, so they increasingly dispatched these assistants in their stead - first with temporary delegated power, then with more permanent authority over a particular city or region.301 It is from these local sub-apostolic figures that the monarchical episcopate gradually emerged - the college of presbyters continued, functioning as the bishop’s assistants and advisers; and as the bishop’s jurisdiction evolved from a city to a diocese and presbyters were sent increasing distances from the bishop’s seat, those presbyters who remained in close to the bishop as his advisers laid the seeds for what ultimately became the cathedral, with its associated clerical offices.302

For the older tradition of High Churchmen, the need to connect the ambiguous terminology of the New Testament to the existing reality of the three-fold order of ministry had been addressed by investigation of the biblical evidence, with reference to standard patristic sources. By the end of the 19th century, however, the advance of critical biblical scholarship had generated a flourishing of scholarship in the post-apostolic period. This environment led the Liberal Catholic school of that period to build a more nuanced historical theory on the foundations of the older tradition. The resulting view, set out particularly by Gore, would become standard for later representatives of the Anglo-Catholic tradition.303

171 The Liberal Catholic treatment of the New Testament material is similar to that of the earlier tradition, which had been upheld (at least in its broad outlines) by the definitive work of the J.B. Lightfoot (himself a Broad Churchman) on the subject of the New Testament ministry. The local ministries of presbyter-bishops and others were overseen by the ‘general’ or ‘catholic’ ministries of the apostles.304 Gradually, however, another pattern emerges in ‘apostolic delegates’ such as Timothy and Titus, who were sent to exercise authority over the Church -and specifically, over its presbyters - in particular places, though they were not bound to that place like later bishops.305 And there is James of Jerusalem, who is like the Apostles in authority, but unlike them exercised his ministry in one city.306 For the older tradition, this structure of the ministry - apostles, and subsequently their delegates, exercising oversight over local presbyter- bishops - transferred smoothly into the later monarchical episcopate, requiring only a shift in terminology. For the Liberal Catholics, however, there is a historical problem: the three-fold order of the ministry as we now have it, though universally attested up to the eve of the Reformation, is not unequivocally indicated in any of the historical material until the end of the second century, several decades after the latest biblical evidence. How are we then to fill in the gap?

The intervening period, however, does have three texts which discuss the order of the Church’s ministry. The first of these is the Didache, or ‘Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.’ Here, we are presented with a picture of local bishops (presbyters) and deacons, who are under the authority of ‘apostles’ and prophets. These figures hold an authority and a ministry which is non- local in nature, though they might choose to settle in a local church. The ‘apostles’ in this case are not the twelve, but other itinerant ministers. Gore speculates that they might be synonymous with the ‘evangelists’ of the New Testament - though Moberly disagrees, noting that at least in the case of Philip the Evangelist (one of the seven) it appears to be a practical title, rather than the name of an office.307 Second is the testimony of Ignatius of Antioch, who emphasizes the necessity of the Church to salvation—defining the Church by the presence of the three-fold order of ministry. Ignatius views the episcopate as established by the Apostles, as universally established and co-extensive with the Church, and essentially monarchical; however, the bishop is not presented as a successor to the apostles, but as the representative of Christ (Gore, Ministry, 290-305). Finally, there is Clement of Rome, who does emphasize the principle of succession, but is also writing to a church in Corinth which apparently has no higher officers than its presbyter-bishops. However, he makes note of ‘distinguished men’ and ‘rulers’ who succeeded the Apostles in the appointing of presbyters, and his own prominence in writing on behalf of the Roman church suggests that he may himself be one such figure (Gore, Ministry, 320-325).

Based on this evidence, Gore (in particular) pulls together a hypothesis. The Apostles appointed ‘delegates’ such as Timothy and Titus, who in turn succeeded them in holding a general authority over the Church. These delegates continued to appoint ‘distinguished men’ who held a general authority over the Church, but gradually settled in particular places. The general nature of their authority, however, meant that (like Clement) they could also receive 172 appeals from neighboring churches. Over time, however, more such figures were appointed, until one could be found in each local church and the episcopate as we now know it had 308 emerged. Thus, Gore’s general argument with regard to the gradual localization of the general ministry of oversight, as it existed in the Apostles, is consistent with the views of the older tradition. In putting forth a generation of ‘distinguished men,’ however, he allows an intermediate step between the immediate successors of the Apostles (such as Timothy and Titus) and the full emergence of the monarchical episcopate.

The foregoing discussion has set forth the High Church and Anglo-Catholic arguments for the historical reality of the apostolic succession: a successive commission of apostolic authority, handed down from the apostles to their successors in an office which eventually, through a process of localization, became the monarchical episcopate. A brief note should be made, in concluding, on how this lines up with contemporary critical scholarship on the period. The mainstream perspective was established by Lightfoot, who allows both the synonymous usage of ‘presbyter’ and ‘bishop’ in the New Testament Church, but also sufficient evidence for some higher office of oversight (not necessarily the monarchical episcopate) established in the late apostolic or immediately post-apostolic period, continuing on more or less directly from the apostles. Though Lightfoot, as a Broad Churchman, was uninterested in the apostolic succession as such, he nonetheless concluded that the continuity of the three-fold ministry ‘from the apostles’ times’—as stated in Cranmer’s preface to the ordinal—is correct. This perspective is sufficiently close to that of the High Church tradition as to be unproblematic. (Lightfoot was a generation earlier than the Liberal Catholics, and they engage with his work extensively).

The question of early church order, however, is highly contested, with numerous views on offer. Of particular note in recent years is a study by Alistair Stewart, The Original Bishops. Stewart puts forth a revisionist thesis, that ‘presbyter’ and ‘bishop’ were not in fact synonymous in the New Testament, but were two distinct (though overlapping) offices: ‘presbyter’ a general term of dignity for various leaders and patrons in the church, ‘bishop’ a specific term for householders who functioned as eucharistic and charitable patrons; therefore Christian polity was even in its earliest days ‘episcopal,’ though the bishop originally presided over a single congregation. As the numbers of these congregations grew, however, representative presbyters from the congregations met to confer, and it was from these ‘federations’ that the rule of a single bishop over multiple congregations in a city gradually emerged. Stewart’s argument has the advantage of accounting for what has generally been granted since the nineteenth century, that eucharistic celebration was reserved at some point to the bishop and only gradually extended to presbyters by delegation. (The traditional view is forced to maintain, somewhat awkwardly, that presbyters were, in the absence of an apostle, the normal presidents at the Eucharist in the New Testament; and that this authority was withdrawn from them with the emergence of monarchical bishops, only to be restored with the growth of dioceses). On other fronts, however objections will doubtless abound.

173

This is not the place for an inquiry into a particular theory, but some points reflecting on the apostolic succession vis a vis critical scholarship in general may be offered. The apostolic succession, like many other traditional doctrines, sits uneasily with critical scholarship, which has raised questions about the nature of succession and ordination in the early church as well as matters of polity. Simplistic models of the succession (e.g. a direct succession by laying on of hands of bishops as we now know them) have become untenable. This does not entail, however, that either the succession or the critical process should be rejected. Rather, for those who think the idea of the succession has value, the doctrine should be moderately stated; while the inherently changeable nature of academic consensus should caution against quickly adopting any detailed critical theory. Of particular note for such a discussion are Gore’s emphasis upon the principle of succession, rather than its particular historical form, and Hooker’s view of the Church. What matters, for the doctrine to remain intact, is that authority is handed down from Christ, by those who have received the commission to do so; the particular forms which this has taken lie under the authority of the Church.

174

The Diaconate in the High Church Tradition

The main text of this paper has focused almost exclusively on the two orders of bishop and priest, saying very little about the role of deacons in the Church. This is for a very practical reason: very little was said on the diaconate in the literature surveyed. And this, in turn, is quite natural, since for almost the entirety of the period discussed diaconal ordination was almost always used simply as a preparatory step towards the priesthood.309 Attention to the diaconate as a distinct order of ministry was a phenomenon of the later twentieth century, and so falls largely outside the scope of the survey given here; a hint of this development comes in Mascall’s insistence that equal theological weight be given to each of the three orders of ministry.310 This appendix gathers together the little that is said about the diaconate among the authors included in the main survey.

For Hooker, the establishment of the diaconate is a test-case for ecclesiastical authority. The two orders of bishops and priests (or of superior and inferior presbyters), though directly founded by the apostles, were nonetheless instituted on divine precedent. The diaconate, however, was founded solely by the Apostles, no corresponding order having been instituted by Christ’s ministry: ‘To these two degrees appointed of our Lord and Saviour Christ his Apostles soon annexed deacons.’ Moreover, though the deacons were initially appointed for the distribution of goods to widows, it lies within the authority of the Church to modify the scope of the diaconal ministry (for instance, to include teaching, or to 311 decrease the emphasis on ministry to the poor).

Hooker’s emphasis on the presbyteral authority of bishops and priests appears to have set the tone for the next few centuries. It is likely with a similar distinction in mind that Andrewes describes the diaconate not as a degree of ministry, but as a ‘degree to ministry.’312 If ‘ministry’ is understood to be, specifically, ‘the ministry of word and sacrament,’ the diaconate necessarily appears marginal. Likewise in the 19th century it appears that Hooker’s analysis is an underlying element in Palmer’s distinction between two natures of ministry in the three orders. It is, admittedly, a higher view of the diaconate than is given by Andrewes - since Palmer includes the diaconate in the ministry generally - but the difference should not be overstated. In contrast to the ministry shared by priests and deacons, the ‘nature’ of the diaconal ministry is ‘of a temporal, or at least, a very inferior character;’ they ‘are only permitted to baptize and preach’- as indeed the laity might be permitted to do in extreme circumstances— and ‘are not given the care of souls, or any of the higher offices of the ministry.’313 Indeed, for some time in the early Church, the ‘ordinary office of the deacon’ was comprised of the duties which in England, over the course of the Middle Ages, had come to be ‘performed by our parish-clerks and church-wardens.’ Nonetheless, in the Church of England, the 175 diaconate’s duties were those assigned to it in the primitive church: ‘first, assisting the priest in divine service, especially in the communion, and distributing the eucharist; secondly, reading scripture and homilies in church; thirdly, catechizing; fourthly, baptizing in the priest’s absence; fifthly, preaching, if he be licensed by the bishop; sixthly, offices of charity towards the poor.’ Nonetheless, it appears that deacons may not celebrate, marry, receive women after childbirth, visit the sick (which, in the 1662 rite, includes celebration of communion and absolution), or bury the dead; and they are not given any jurisdiction within the Church. Rather, ‘the occasional exercise of such functions by deacons, is rather by the tacit license and dispensation of the church authorizing them to act as -assistant, than by any actual 314 law.’

For Moberly, on the other hand, those who point to the ‘external and secular’ nature of the diaconate are in some degree right (there is a legitimate contrast between ‘tables’ and ‘prayer’); but this risks being exaggerated. The practical duties of the diaconate are in fact opportunities for ministry, and not only for ‘spiritually minded’ deacons—the diaconate itself has a distinct spiritual dimension. It is not to be overlooked that the primary qualification given for the first deacons is that they were ‘full of spirit and of wisdom.’ Therefore it can be safely concluded that ‘spiritual teaching and influence were always understood and intended to be elements in the office, to which spiritual men were spiritually set apart,’ even if such roles were secondary in such a way that allowed the ministry of deacons to be distinguished 315 from that of the Apostles.

Thus, up to the middle of the 19th century, the emphasis appears to have been more on the limitations of diaconal ministry than on any distinct spiritual dimension in it. By the end of the century, however, the pieces were beginning to be put in place for the full recognition given to diaconal ministry in the 20th century.

176 The Real Presence in the High Church Tradition

Discussion of the eucharistic sacrifice within Anglicanism has generally depended on a theory of commemoration, rather than some sort of repetition of the Cross. As such, the question of the real presence is peripheral. Nonetheless, the occasional reference to a symbolic sacrifice of Christ in the elements naturally raises questions; and the particular topic of how the elements are consecrated has some bearing on the role of the priest in persona Christi. It is therefore desirable to present a brief discussion of this subject. This is however, a very partial treatment, covering only sources encountered in the pursuit of this study’s central questions.

Anglican eucharistic theology is, broadly speaking, in the Reformed tradition. Despite a turn towards Zwinglianism in the 1552 Prayer Book, after the Elizabethan Settlement a more Calvinian doctrine of the Eucharist took hold. This can be seen in the history of the so-called ‘black rubric.’ This was a late addition to the 1552 Book, inserted on the insistence of John Knox; it proscribed belief in ‘any real and essential presence there being of Christ’s natural flesh and blood.’ The rubric was, however, deleted in 1559, and a version reinstated in 1662 prohibited instead the belief in ‘any Corporal Presence of Christ's natural Flesh and Blood.’ Christ’s body and blood might thus be really present, so long as this presence was not ‘corporal,’ or (roughly speaking) material. So Hooker holds that ‘Christ is personally there present’ though ‘corporally there absent.’316 Likewise for Andrewes, ‘the holy mysteries’ are ‘[w]here His name is, I am sure, and more than His name, even the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; and those, not without His soul; nor that without His deity; nor all of these, without inestimable high benefits attending upon them.’317 Again, Laud defines the ‘Calvinist’ doctrine (at least, according to ‘they which follow Calvin himself’) as including the belief, not only ‘that the true and real Body of Christ is received in the Eucharist, but that it is there, and that we partake of it, vere et realiter, which are Calvin’s own words; … Nor can that place by any art be shifted, or by any violence wrested from Calvin’s true meaning … to any “supper in heaven” whatsoever.’ He then goes on to add, that ‘for the Church of England, nothing is more plain, than that it believes and teaches the true and 318 real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.’

Within this general Calvinian framework, however, there are two points of emphasis which would shape the evolution of the doctrine. The first is an emphasis on eucharistic participation in Christ (1 Cor. 10:16). This has roots in anti-Roman polemic (Articles 25, 28); it could also be employed against a Zwinglian doctrine of the Eucharist. So Hooker argues that the Eucharist is not ‘a shadow … void of Christ’ but the ‘means’ of a ‘real participation of Christ.’319 Andrewes similarly holds that it is an idolatrous ‘imagination’ concerning the ‘breaking of bread’ to say that the breaking of bread is only an outward symbol, ‘whereas the “bread which we break is the partaking of Christ’s” true “body” - and not of a sign, figure,

177 or remembrance of it.’320 And then there is the knotty question of just where to ‘locate’ Christ’s presence. Hooker, for example, saw only two options for an ‘external’ presence of Christ: either transubstantiation, which was anathema to Protestants, or the Lutheran doctrine of ‘,’ which he mistakenly interprets as the ‘kneading up of both substances’ - the body of Christ and the bread - ‘as it were into one lump.’321 Both such options are unsatisfactory. Hooker, preferring that ‘Christ be whole within man only,’ concludes that ‘[t]he real presence of Christ’s most blessed body and blood is not therefore to be sought in the sacrament [i.e. in the elements], but in the worthy receiver of the 322 sacrament.’

The second point derives from an anti-Lutheran polemic. It has been held within Lutheranism that the divine attribute of ubiquity is communicated, in virtue of the incarnation, to Christ’s body, which in turn makes the Eucharistic presence possible. Against this, both Reformed and Roman Catholics insisted that this violates the Chalcedonian definition, that Christ’s human and divine natures are united not only without separation, but also without confusion or mixture.323 Thus, as stated by the ‘black rubric’ in both 1552 and 1662, ‘the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and not here; it being against the truth of Christ's natural Body to be at one time in more places than one.’ This, of course, poses the problem of how to bridge the gap between Christ’s bodily presence in heaven, and his non- bodily presence in the Eucharist. Calvin’s solution was to rely on the Holy Spirit, who ‘truly unites things separated by space.’ Thus, the communion of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist are by the ‘efficacy of the Spirit.’324 In this vein, Hooker, holds that those who receive ‘the person of Christ’ also receive ‘by the same sacrament his Holy Spirit to sanctify them;’ and ‘that what merit, force, or virtue soever 325 there is in his sacrificed body and blood, we freely, fully, and wholly have it by this sacrament.’

These two points are not contradictory; nor are they incompatible with a belief (of some sort) in the real presence, as the preceding sources show. However, if they are developed independently, they produce two new positions. ‘’ holds that Christ is present in the heart of the worthy receiver; ‘virtualism’ believes that the communicant receives the virtue or benefit of Christ’s body and blood through the agency of the Holy Spirit. It is generally accepted that these two positions make up the mainstream of High Church views on the real presence in the 18th and early 19th centuries. This is not to say (for the most part) that they were adopted systematically; but rather that these two positions supplied the general ways of speaking about the Eucharist. If one emphasized the presence of Christ in the worthy communicant, that writer might be a ‘receptionist;’ if one preferred rather to speak of the benefits received in the Eucharist, that writer might be a ‘virtualist.’

These two positions also provide the context for two developments in the High Church tradition’s eucharistic theology. The change with regard to ‘receptionism’ is the later of the two, coming in the context of the Oxford Movement. For the Tractarians, relying on the worthiness of the communicant was to put things the wrong way around: grace doesn’t 178 depend on us. We may need to open our hands to receive it, but the offer of grace depends solely on the character and promises of God. Thus in the Eucharist, as Pusey put it, if the point is that we receive the body and blood of Christ, ‘they must be there, in order that we may receive them.’326 This perspective is what the Tractarians referred to as the ‘real objective presence,’ to make the point that it was a presence outside and independent of the individual communicant, not ‘subjective’ and within. This, however, involved rejecting Hooker’s choice between transubstantiation and consubstantiation as the only two ‘external’ options. Pusey’s theology of the Eucharist retained a similar outline to what had gone before: a critical attitude towards transubstantiation, an aversion to the Lutheran doctrine of ubiquity, and a spiritual rather than a physical presence of Christ are all held, as in earlier writers. But he also held to an ‘objective’ presence, by asserting a ‘sacramental’ mode of Christ’s presence, which is not so much a theory in itself, as a rejection of theories: ‘The word has been chosen to express, not our knowledge, but our ignorance; or that unknowing knowledge of faith, which we have of things Divine, surpassing knowledge.’327 Such an ‘objective’ presence has, in one version or another, been characteristic of later Anglo- Catholicism, though more Roman-oriented Anglo-Catholics have, since the late nineteenth 328 century, adopted the doctrine of transubstantiation.

The earlier shift, with reference to virtualism, is the more intricate of the two. This took place in the early 18th century, between Johnson and Waterland. Johnson, as we have seen, believes the elements to be symbols of the body and blood of Christ - in both the sacrificial and the sacramental aspects of the Eucharist. The eucharistic bread and wine, though remaining in their own substances, are ‘the true spiritual Body and Blood of Christ,’ ‘the very Body and Blood,’ ‘though not in substance, yet in power and effect.’329 This occurs through the agency of the Holy Spirit, who ‘at the prayers of the Priests and people, is in a peculiar manner present, and imparts a secret power to the Sacramental Body and Blood, by which they are made to be in energy and effect, though not in substance, the very Body and Blood Which they represent.’330 It is at this point, however, that he oversteps, arguing that the Holy Spirit is the ‘immediate’ presence of God in the Church, whereas the Father and the Son are only present ‘mediately’; and that as the Holy Spirit is our instrument of communion with God, therefore in the Eucharist ‘the Holy Spirit [is] in an especial manner present with the Holy Symbols, to render them the spiritual Body and Blood.’331 From this point he goes on to criticize not only Roman Catholic and Lutheran doctrine, but even Calvin, for asserting an immediate communion with Christ, which Johnson counts as 332 absurd.

Waterland agrees with Johnson that the eucharistic elements are indeed symbols of Christ, though in receiving communion, not in offering - to maintain a symbolic offering of Christ in the Eucharist, he thinks, is to conflate the sacrificial and sacramental aspects of the Eucharist: ‘we do not offer Christ to God in the Eucharist, but God offers Christ to us, in return for our offering ourselves.’333 Although he admits a ‘spiritual’ presence of Christ in the

179 Eucharist, and an ‘operation of the Holy Spirit,’ the ‘communication from God’ in which we participate, is ‘of Christ’s crucified body directly, and of the body glorified consequentially.’334 To speak of an immediate communion of the Spirit and only a mediated participation in Christ does not square with Scripture; to speak (as Johnson does) of Christ’s ‘spiritual body’ as distinct from his physical human body is to make ‘two true bodies of Christ;’ and language of ‘power and effect’ or ‘virtue and energy,’ he thinks, is prone to confuse the issue. Rather, ‘the sacramental bread’ is ‘a symbol exhibitive of the one true body of Christ, viz., the natural or personal body, given and received in the Eucharist: I say, given and received spiritually, but truly and really; and the more truly, because spiritually, as the spiritual sense, and not the literal, is the 335 true sense.’

This, however, produced a shift in the understanding of the eucharistic consecration. In Hooker, there had been a balance in agency between Christ and the Spirit. In ‘God’s mysteries,’ the acts of the priest are not his own but the Spirit’s; but at the same time, it is Christ who ‘doth by his own divine power add to the natural substance thereof supernatural efficacy, which addition to the nature of those consecrated elements changeth them,’ so that they become ‘instruments’ of communion with Christ.336 In Johnson, however, the model is so heavily pneumatological that Waterland is driven to react. For Waterland, the spirit acts not on the elements (patristic language to this effect is held to be imprecise) but on the receiver; and emphasis shifts rather to the words of institution.337 This emphasis appears to have carried on into the 19th century: for Pusey, the saving body and blood are present ‘by virtue of our Lord’s words.’338 This development is notable, not so much for its impact on later Anglo- but for what it says about the question of agency in the eucharistic consecration. Anglo-Catholics after the Oxford Movement have reclaimed, through various liturgical researches, an interest in the pneumatological aspect of the Eucharist, though (naturally) the emphasis on the words of institution remains. However, the emphasis given particularly to the words of institution—Christ’s words, as spoken by him—underscores, if tacitly, the principle of the priest’s role in persona Christi.

180 Endnotes

1 The United Kingdom of Great Britain was formed by the English and Scottish Acts of Union in 1707; previously, Scotland and England had been separate nations ruled by the same monarch since the accession of James I. 2 The term ‘Anglo-Catholic’ has a complex history. The ‘orthodox’ saw the Church of England as, simply, the Catholic Church in England; and the original use of ‘Anglo-Catholic’ reflects this. It meant simply an ‘Anglican.’ This use continued late into the nineteenth century. In the wake of the Oxford Movement, however, ‘catholic’ increasingly became a partisan term, and by the end of the century ‘Anglo-Catholic’ had come to refer to a certain set of sacramental, liturgical, and ascetic beliefs and practices. 3 Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity III.i.2-3, in The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine Mr. Richard Hooker, ed. John Keble, 7th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888); William Jones, Four Lectures on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews in The Theological and Miscellaneous Works of the Rev. William Jones, new ed. (London: F., C., and J. Rivington, 1810), 3:246. Jones, the vicar of Nayland, was a leading theologian of the so-called ‘Hutchinsonian’ school of High Churchmanship in the eighteenth century. Together with Waterland, he had a strong influence on the theology of the ‘orthodox’ party in the nineteenth century. 4 Jones, An Essay on the Church, in Works, 5:25-27. 5 Lancelot Andrewes, A Summary View of the Government Both of the Old and New Testament: Whereby the Episcopal Government of Christ’s Church is Vindicated, in The Works of Lancelot Andrewes, Sometime (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1854), 6:350; The Convocation Book of 1606, Commonly Called Bishop Overall’s Convocation Book, Concerning the Government of God’s Catholic Church and the Kingdoms of the Hole World (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1844),tw-3 6, 74-78. The Convocation of 1606 was asked by James I to provide a theological support to his reign in the aftermath in of Guy Fawkes’ attempted assassination; though the first part of its legislation was denied the royal assent due to (in James’ view) a defective doctrine of divine right, and subsequent parts were dropped, this proposed legislation remains as a testimony to the theological school favoured by the early Stuart court. 6 Andrewes, Summary View, in Works, 6:348-349. 7 Ibid., 6:350-352; Convocation Book, 130-144; cf. , Notes and Collections on the Book of Common Prayer, vol. 5 of The Works of the Right Reverend Father in God, John Cosin, Lord (Oxford: John Henry and James Parker, 1843-1855), 308-309. Cosin was a Laudian theologian, exiled to Paris with the royal court during Cromwell’s Protectorate. On returning to England, he was made Bishop of Durham; he was among the more influential figures in the revision of the 1662 Prayer Book. 8 Andrewes, Sermons Preached in Lent, no. 2, in Works, 2:32-35; William Laud, ‘The Answer of the Most Reverend Father in God, William, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, to the Speech of the Lord Say and Seal, Touching the Liturgy,’ in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, D.D., Sometime Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1847-1857), 6:92; ‘An Answer to the Speech of William Lord Viscount Say and Seal, etc. Spoken in Parliament, upon the Bill about Bishop’s Power in Civil Affairs,’ in Works, 6:150-153. 9 Hooker, III.i.14. 10 Ibid., V.lxxviii.1, VII.vi.1. 11 Jones, Hebrews, in Works, 3:250-252. On Jones, see above n. 3.

181 12 Walter Lock, ‘The Church,’ in Lux Mundi: A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation, ed. Charles Gore, 2nd ed. (New York: E. and J.B. young, 1890), 365-377. 13 Charles Gore, The Ministry of the Christian Church (London: Rivingtons, 1889), 36-44. Gore was the first principle of Pusey House, editor of Lux Mundi, and founder of the Community of the Resurrection. Successively , Birmingham, and Oxford, he wrote prolifically in both academic theology and popular apologetics. 14 Ibid., 45-49; R.C. Moberly, Ministerial Priesthood: Chapters (Preliminary to a Study of the Ordinal) on the Rationale and the Meaning of the Christian Priesthood, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1899), 1. Professor of Pastoral Theology at Oxford, Moberly was the son of a High Church bishop and had grown up as a neighbour to the Keble family. He is best known outside Anglicanism for his work, Atonement and Personality. 15 Lock, 378-381; Gore, Ministry, 70-71. 16 Moberly, 45. 17 Cosin, 308-309. See above, n. 7. 18 John Johnson, The Unbloody Sacrifice, and Altar, Unvailed and Supported (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1847), 71, 418, 431. Johnson, the vicar of Cranbrook, was a friend of the nonjuring bishop George Hickes, and though a juring churchman himself, reflects many of the theological values of the nonjurors. 19 Charles Leslie, The Case of the Regale and Pontificate Stated, in a Conference Concerning the Independency of the Church, in The Theological Works of the Rev. Charles Leslie (Oxford: the University Press, 1832), 3:405-6, 408-409, 528-9. The son of a Laudian bishop in Ireland, Leslie was a nonjuring polemicist whose apologetic work remained popular into the nineteenth century. 20 John Keble, Tract 4, 2-3; in Tracts for the Times by Members of the University of Oxford (London, J.G.F. & J. Rivington). 21 Vernon Staley, The Catholic Religion: A Manual of Instruction for Members of the Anglican Communion (Morehouse, 1983), 17. An Anglo-Catholic liturgical scholar, Staley produced several liturgical studies and manuals, but is best known today for this popular catechetical work. 22 Ibid., 17-19; 22. 23 Ibid., 22. 24 Ibid., 26. 25 Moberly, 68. On Moberly, see above n. 14. 26 Hooker, V.lxxviii.4. 27 Hooker, VII.ii.3; VII.iii. Hooker notes, in addition, that bishops have since the time of St Paul reserved the authority to consecrate widows and virgins. Ibid., VII.vi.2-3. 28 Andrewes, Certain Sermons Preached at Sundry Times, no. 2, in Works, 5:62-64; Laud, ‘Bishop’s Power in Civil Affairs,’ in Works, 6:173. 29 William Palmer, A Treatise on the Church of Christ: Designed Chiefly for the Use of Students in Theology, 3rd ed. (London: J.G.F. and J. Rivington, 1842), 2:282-284. The first scholar to publish an historical study of the Anglican liturgy, Palmer was briefly connected with the Oxford Movement but soon clashed with Newman; for the remainder of his life relations with the Tractarians would be characterized by mutual distrust. His Treatise on the Church is a landmark work in nineteenth-century High Church theology, and was widely respected by ‘old’ High Churchmen and Tractarians alike.

182 30 Convocation Book, 133-134; Christopher Wordsworth, Theophilus Anglicanus; or, Instruction for the Young Student Concerning the Church, and the Anglican Branch of it, 4th ed. (London: Francis & John Rivington, 1846), 95-100. On the Convocation Book, see above, n. 5. Bishop of Lincoln and nephew of , Wordsworth was an ‘old’ High Churchman and the author of both scholarly works and several hymns. His son John became and was the author of Saepius Officio. 21 Hooker, V.lxxviii.4;VII.iv.1, 4. 32 Andrewes, Summary View, in Works, 6:353, 358-360. 33 Benjamin Harrison, Tract 24, 1-7; Gore, Ministry, 70-71. On Gore, see above, n. 14. 34 Michael Ramsey, The Gospel and the Catholic Church (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2009), 6-7. For Ramsey, ‘the distinction between Bishop, presbyter, and prophet’ is ‘a distinction that from the first concerns the Gospel of God.’ Ibid., 186-188. Ramsey was Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge before becoming successively Bishop of Durham, , and Archbishop of Canterbury. As primate, he took a particular interest in furthering ecumenical relations. 35 Ibid., 22-23. 36 Ibid., 40-48; 51-53. 37 E.L. Mascall, Corpus Christi: Essays on the Church and the Eucharist (London: Longmans, Green, 1953), 12-14; The Recovery of Unity: A Theological Approach (London: Longmans, Green, 1958), 172-174. Professor at King’s College, London, Mascall is among the most influential Anglo-Catholic theologians of the mid- to-late twentieth century. 38 Newman, Tract 74, 1-2. 39 This verse, in particular, is not an ad hoc citation: John 20:22-23 provides the formula for the ordination of a priest in Cranmer’s ordinal. 40 Convocation Book, 133; Leslie, A Discourse Shewing Who They Are That Are Now Qualified to Administer Baptism and the Lord’s Supper: Wherein the Cause of Episcopacy is Briefly Treated, in Works, 7:100-102; Regale¸ in Works, 3:405-6; Jones, Essay, in Works, 5:25-29; A. P. Perceval, A Collection of Papers Connected with the Theological Movement of 1833 (London, J.G.F. & J. Rivington, 1842), 53, 56; Palmer, Treatise, 1:136. An ‘old’ High Churchman with ties to the Oxford Movement, Perceval is of note as the author of a ‘supplemental catechism’ on the apostolic succession, of a sort that was popular among High Churchmen in the 1820s-30s. 41 Wordsworth, 79-82, 94-96. 42 , A Review of the Doctrine of the Eucharist, as Laid Down in Scripture and Antiquity, in The Works of the Rev. Daniel Waterland, D.D., ed. (Oxford: the University Press, 1856), 4:526; Staley, 11; Gregory Dix, The Question of Anglican Orders: Letters to a Layman, Rev. ed. (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1956), 36-37. Waterland was Archdeacon of Middlesex, and a leading defender of High Church doctrine in the early eighteenth century. He became one of the foremost theological authorities of the ‘orthodox’ party in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Dix was an Anglican Benedictine monk and liturgical scholar, best known for his work, The Shape of the Liturgy. 43 J.W. Bowden, Tract 5, 10-12; Harrison, Tract 17, 1-4. 44 Lock, 383; Moberly, 89. 45 Gore, Ministry, 70-71, Orders and Unity (London: John Murray, 1909), 143-147. 46 Ramsey, Gospel, 195-196. 47 Hooker, V.lxxvii.8. 48 Ibid., V.lxxvii.1, 8; V.lxxviii.4.

183 49 Andrewes, Sermons of the Sending of the Holy Ghost, no. 9, in Works, 3:264. 50 Ibid., 3:273; Andrewes, A Pattern of Catechistical Doctrine, in Works, 6:193-194. 51 Leslie, Regale¸ in Works, 3:407; Jones, Essay, in Works, 5:29. 52 Newman, Tract 7, 2-4. 53 Moberly, 89, emphasis Moberly’s. 54 Gore, Ministry, 71-72; emphasis Gore’s. 55 Ibid., 72-75; cf. Moberly, 121-122. 56 Gore, Ministry, 76. 57 Mascall, Corpus Christi, 25-26. 58 Mascall, Christ, the Christian, and the Church: A Study of the Incarnation and its Consequences (London: Longmans, Green, 1946), 123-124. 59 Mascall, Recovery, 183. 60 Ibid., 185-186; Mascall, Women and the Priesthood of the Church (London: Church Literature Association, 1960), 20-21. 61 Hooker, V.lxxvii.9, 12. 62 Andrewes, Sermons Preached in Lent, no. 2, in Works, 2:32-35. 63 Leslie, Regale, in Works, 3:290-291. 64 Ibid., 3:373. 65 Johnson, Unbloody Sacrifice, 431. 66 Newman, Tract 1; Tract 2, 2-3 67 Newman, Tract 1; J. Keble, Tract 4, 7; Bowden, Tract 5, 13; Harrison, Tract 17, 4-6. 68 Gore, Ministry, 68; 66-69; cf. 97-107. 69 Ibid., 348-351. 70 Mascall, Corpus Christi, 16. 71 Mascall, Recovery, 162. 72 Ramsey, Gospel, 190-191. 73 Hooker, VI.i.4; Andrewes, Sermons Preached in Lent, no. 2, in Works, 2:25-26; Certain Sermons, no. 2, in Works, 5:63-64; Leslie, Discourse, in Works, 7:108-110, 131; Jones, Hebrews, in Works, 3:253; Perceval, 57. 74 The term plene esse - ‘full being’ - is sometimes encountered nowadays. It is however of 20th century vintage, having emerged from the lapse of a robust bene esse theory into a more tepid and pragmatic rendition of that position. As such, it is close to the bene esse position described here, but as a position in its own right it will not enter into our discussion. 75 Hooker, VII.i.2-3; VII.ix.2. Hooker defines heresy as ‘an error falsely fathered upon Scriptures, indeed repugnant to the truth of the Word of God, and by the consent of the universal Church, … declared to be such.’ The historical figure under discussion in this passage is Aërius of Sebaste. 76 Ibid., I.ii.1; I.viii.4. 77 Ibid., V.ix.1-5. 78 Ibid., III.iii.2-4. 79 Ibid., VII.v.2; VII.xi.11. 80 Ibid., III.ix.1 81 Ibid., VII.vi.6-7. 82 Hooker, V.lxxviii.4; VII.v.2 83 Ibid., III.ix.1. 84 Ibid., I.viii.1-2.

184 85 Ibid., I.viii.9. 86 Ibid., V.vi.1-2; VII.v.2. 87 Ibid., I.viii.9, V.vii.1-4. 88 Ibid., III.ii.1; VII.v.2; VII.xi.10. 89 Ibid., III.x.1-2. 90 Ibid., III.ii.1. 91 Ibid., III.ii.1. 92 Ibid., VII.xiv.11. 93 Hooker, VII.v.8. 94 Andrewes, Certain Sermons, no. 2, in Works, 5:62-64. 95 Hooker, V lxxviii.7, 10-12. 96 Laud, ‘A Speech Delivered in the Starr-Chamber, the 14 of June 1637. At the Censure, of John Bastwick, Henry Burton, and William Prinn: Concerning Pretended Innovations in the Church,’ in Works, 6:43; Letters 177 and 178, in Works, 6:574-575, 577. 97 Laud, Letter 177, in Works, 6:574. 98 Laud, ‘Pretended Innovations in the Church,’ in Works, 6:43; ‘Bishop’s Power in Civil Affairs,’ in Works, 6:173; Letter 177, in Works, 6:573-574. 99 Laud, A Relation of the Conference between William Laud, Late Archbishop of Canterbury, and Mr. Fisher the Jesuit, by the Command of King James, of Ever Blessed Memory, in Works, 2:143-144. 100 Laud, ‘An Answer … Touching the Liturgy,’ in Works, 6:134. This agreement comes despite severe differences regarding ministry and worship considered in themselves. 101 Leslie, Discourse, in Works, 7:144-145. 102 Wordsworth, 43-44, 46. 103 Palmer, Treatise, 1:107-108. 104 Ibid., 1:277-298, 305-317. This is, perhaps, why Leslie classes the German Lutherans as episcopalians. 105 Perceval, 54; Wordsworth, 8, emphasis Wordsworth’s 106 Jones, Essay, in Works, 5:29. 107 Jones, The Churchman’s Catechism, or Elements of Instruction on the Nature and Constitution of the Christian Church, in Works, 5:440. 108 Perceval, 57. 109 Palmer, Treatise, 1:294-298. 110 A number of ‘old’ High Churchmen were inclined to attribute this at least in part to the lack of episcopacy. Palmer, Treatise, 1:301; cf. H.J. Rose, State of the Protestant Religion in Germany.) 111 Palmer/Newman,Tract 15, 10-11; see also the treatment of schism given in Bowden, Tract 29, 6-8. 112 J. Keble, Tract 4, 2-3. 113 Ibid., Tract 4, 5-6. 114 Newman, Tract 11, 2-4. 115 Newman, Tract 47, 3-4; cf. Wordsworth, 41. 116 Newman, Tract 47, 1-3. 117 In the British Critic, 1839; quotation given in S.W. Sykes and S.W. Gilley, ‘“No Bishop, No Church!” The Tractarian Impact on Anglicanism,’ in Tradition Renewed: The Oxford Movement Conference Papers, ed. Geoffrey Rowell (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick, 1986), 130.

185

118 Rune Imberg, In Quest of Authority: The ‘Tracts for the Times’ and the Development of the Tractarian Leaders, 1833-41, (Lund University Press, 1987), 172. 119 Hooker, VII.v.2; VII.vi.3, 8. 120 Staley, 26, 33-34; Lock, 383. 121 Lock, 383. 122 Staley, 34-35. 123 Ibid., 21. 124 Lock, 383. 125 Staley, 24-25. 126 Gore, Ministry, 110; Unity, 49-50. Gore reaches his conclusion by applying Matt. 8:10-12 to the state of the Church. 127 Gore, Ministry, 110-111, emphasis mine. 128 Newman, A Letter to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D. on his Recent Eirenicon (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1866), 9. 129 Pusey, On the Clause ‘And the Son,’ in Regard to the Eastern Church and the Bonn Conference (Oxford: James Parker, 1876). 130 Staley, 41-42. 131 Lock, 378-381; Gore, Unity, 172-173. 132 Lock, 380-381; Gore, Unity, 174-184, 196. 133 Gore, Unity, 184-185; 195-198. Anglicanism, as expected, is seen as providing the best balance between the two. 134 Ibid., 204-208. 135 Ibid., 73-74, 190-192, 201-204, 225-226. Specifically, Gore advises against crushing prophecy: ‘We should expect from age to age men to arise with something of prophetic power, to teach truth which the church is neglecting, and be evangelists of those whom the church is failing to win. … [The Church] ought by this time to have learned its lesson, and to be ready in the future to give a welcome to any teachers of half-forgotten truths, who can make a legitimate appeal to Scripture, and are reasonably submissive to the discipline of membership. The one altar and the one ministry are quite compatible with a very free exercise of spiritual gifts like those of the apostolic age, which we may see renewed in any other.’ Ibid., 203-204. 136 Ramsey, Gospel, 73. 137 Ibid., 56. 138 Ramsey, Gospel, 144-147, 161-173, 186-188. 139 Ibid., Gospel, 190-191. 140 Ibid., Gospel, 190. 141 Ibid., Gospel, 190-191, 195-196. 142 Version: 1550 Ordinal, http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1549/Priests_1549.htm, accessed April 14, 2016. 143 Confession and absolution, including private confession, have been accepted consistently throughout Anglican history. The form of absolution given at the explicitly teaches the priestly authority of absolution, and private confession is encouraged in the eucharistic exhortations and in the office for the visitation of the sick. Additionally, the canons of 1604, approved under James I, upheld the seal of the confessional for all cases in which maintaining confidence would not

186 constitute high treason. Nonetheless, the Tractarian ‘introduction’ of private confession caused a great deal of controversy—first, as putting into practice what had hitherto been largely theoretical; and second, in urging confession as a regular spiritual discipline, rather than as a remedy for extreme circumstances. See discussion in Peter Nockles, ‘The Oxford Movement: Historical Background 1780-1833’ and Richard Sharp, ‘New Perspectives on the High Church Tradition: Historical Background 1730-1780,’ in Tradition Renewed, 4-23, 24-50. 144 Hooker, VI.iv.1, 15. In Hooker’s understanding of the Prayer Book system, the priestly ministry of absolution is exercised primarily in the general confessions. Private confession and absolution is permitted, but not required—and he does feel some discomfort with the notion, due to the medieval implementation of the practice. Nonetheless, ‘[t]he minister’s power to absolve is publicly taught and professe1 d, the Church not denied to have authority of either abridging or enlarging the use and exercise of that power’ 145 Andrewes, Certain Sermons, no. 4, in Works, 5:94-96. 146 Hooker, V.lxxvi.1, 10. 147 Leslie, Regale, in Works, 3:405-406. 148 Ibid., 3:408-409. 149 Johnson, Unbloody Sacrifice, 431. 150 Leslie, Regale, in Works, 3:410-411. This is implicit as well in Hooker’s treatment of bishops and priests as ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ members of the same presbyterate. 151 Johnson, 431. 152 Palmer, Treatise, 2:298-301. A notable instance of this teaching authority is in the Council of Jerusalem. 153 Gore, Ministry, 202-211. Gore also notes that the only clear evidence for lay celebration in the early Church was among the Montanists, though they did not so much oppose sacerdotalism as substitute a priesthood of supposed inspiration for the priesthood of the ordained. 154 Palmer, Treatise, 2:300. 155 Andrewes, Of the Holy Ghost, no. 9, in Works, 3:263. The latter point may also serve to interpret the Article’s obscure phrase concerning ‘the corrupt following of the apostles’ as meaning simply that it had changed since its original institution. 156 Cosin, 366-367, emphasis added. 157 Ibid., 366-367. 158 Gore, Ministry, 115-116. 159 With regard to form, the Pope objects that the 1550 ordinal does not specify the order being conferred in the formula of ordination itself, ostensibly making the distinction between presbyteral and episcopal ordination ambiguous. Anglican respondents argued that the addition of the phrase ‘for the office and work of a priest’ was added in 1662 as a clarification of existing views, not as a change in doctrine; and that in any case the 1550 ordinal did make clear the order being conferred at numerous other points in the ordination rite. The supposed defect of intent will be addressed in the final portion of this paper. Apostolicae Curae, available at http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13curae.htm, accessed 8 August 2014, §25-28, 33 160 Moberly, 302-304. In his enumeration of external requirements for valid ordination, he emphasizes the apostolic succession, rather than ‘form’—likely reflecting the influence of the older tradition. 161 Saepius Officio: The Reply of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to the Letter Apostolicae Curae of Pope Leo XIII, trans. Hugh Fraser Stewarts (London, Church Literature Association), 11-13. Though it is

187 the official response of the Archbishops, the actual writing of the reply fell to John Wordsworth, Bishop of Salisbury and son of Christopher Wordsworth. 162 Dix, Anglican Orders, 36-37. 163 Andrewes, Of the Holy Ghost, no. 9, in Works, 3:261-262. 164 Andrewes, Certain Sermons no. 4, in Works 5:91-92, Of the Holy Ghost no. 9, in Works, 3:276-277. 165 Andrewes, Of the Holy Ghost, no. 9, in Works, 3:261-263, 276; Certain Sermons no. 4, in Works 5:91- 93. Succession in this ministry is the ‘proper and ordinary’ pattern established by God, though God may act directly without ministers, or through those who are ‘in case of necessity Ministers, but by office not so.’ 166 Hooker, V.lxxvii.5-8; V.lxxviii.6. 167 Gore, Ministry, 239-240, 249-251; Unity, 104-108, 135-139; Moberly, 158-168. 168 Gore, Unity, 109-111. He charges the excesses of the Montanist heresy with causing much of this loss, by stimulating a reaction which led the Church to love ‘order and discipline and tradition with a one-sided devotion.’ Gore, Unity, 158. 169 Hooker, V.lxxvii.7; Andrewes, Of the Holy Ghost no. 9, in Works, 3:262; cf. Convocation Book, 132- 133. 170 Andrewes, Of the Holy Ghost no. 9, in Works, 3:262, 277. 171 Hooker, V.lxxvii.5-8. 172 Andrewes, of the Holy Ghost no.9, in Works, 3:262 173 Hooker, V.lxxvii.2-3. Hooker grounds his understanding of this ‘mark of separation’ in 1 Cor. 14:16, 23-24. Following Chrysostom, he interprets δι της (a ‘private’ or ‘ungifted’ person) as ‘laity,’ distinct from the presumed clergy (i.e. public officers of the Church), who have the appropriate gifts of the Spirit to pronounce ‘spiritual blessing.’ Because he understands this mark as indelible, he rejects any re-ordination: even those once degraded from the ministry are, if the sentence is reversed, simply reinstated, not re-ordained. 174 Ibid., V.lxxvii.8. 175 Andrewes, Certain Sermons no. 4, in Works 5:89-91. See 1 Cor. 3:9, 2 Cor. 6:1; 2:10. Greek προσωπο, ν refers to the mask worn by an actor; Latin persona has a similar meaning, though with added legal significance. The phrase thus describes the priestly office as a dramatic or legal representation of Christ, who remains the principal agent of the act. 176 Pusey, ‘Entire Absolution of the Penitent (I)’ in Nine Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford, 1843-1857. 177 Wordsworth, 127. 178 Mascall, Recovery, 185-186. 179 Leslie, Regale, in Works, 3:310-311. He is not as far from Hooker as it may appear—he admits that the character of the ministry remains ‘in potential,’ and in context he is arguing only that, for instance, a lawfully defrocked bishop is not regarded as a bishop. The way in which he argues that, though eccentric, is nonetheless a useful illustration of how closely the two were bound together. 180 Gore, Ministry, 115-116; 187-196. 181 Given Moberly, 95-96, cf. Gore, Ministry, 84. 182 Liddon, ‘Sacerdotalism’ in University Sermons, second series, 198-199; quoted in Moberly, 96-97. 183 Moberly, 99. 184 Ibid., 91-92.

188 185 Mascall, Women, 16-17. Mascall of course recognizes that ‘Catholic’ traditions do grant authority to their ministers, as well as imparting character, but he considers this to be peripheral to the definition of the ministry where a priestly character is accepted. 186 Saepius Officio, 22; emphasis added. 187 Apostolicae Curae. §30. 188 Moberly, 349-350. 189 A ‘private mass’ or missa privata is technically a eucharistic celebration ‘deprived’ of certain ceremonies which are used in a (e.g. singing and the use of incense), and is therefore equivalent to a ‘said mass.’ However, the fact that ‘said mass’ was often done by the priest alone, solely for the sake of performing the eucharistic sacrifice, has led to a common usage of the term ‘private mass’ to refer to celebration in this context, rather simplified ceremony of the liturgy. 190 Pusey, Tract 81, 7-10; cf. Letter to the , 135. As Pusey interprets the article’s language, this doctrine was ‘blasphemous,’ in that it diminished the value of Christ’s work finished on the cross; it was ‘dangerous,’ particularly in that it led to a system of selling ‘masses for the dead’ which led sinners to pursue monetary transactions rather than repentance. 191 Palmer, Treatise, 1:400-417. 192 Waterland, Review, in Works, 4:728-729; 738-739; ‘The Christian Sacrifice Explained,’ in Works, 5:134-147. 193 See excerpts in Pusey/Harrison, Tract 81, 61 ff. 194 Andrewes, Sermons of the Resurrection, no. 7, in Works, 2:300. 195 Andrewes, Of the Resurrection, no. 7, in Works, 2:301, citing 1 Cor. 10:21, Heb. 13:10. 196 Laud, ‘Bishop’s Power in Civil Affairs,’ in Works, 6:164-165. 197 Cosin, 115-121; 333-336. 198 Ibid., 114-115. 199 Ibid., 347-348. 200 Andrewes, Of the Resurrection, no. 7, in Works, 2:291-292. 201 Ibid., 2:299. 202 Ibid., 2:291, 299-300. 203 Andrewes, Certain Sermons, no. 2, in Works, 5:66-67; citing Ps. 50:5, Luke 22:20, Heb. 13:10. 204 Andrewes, Of the Resurrection, no. 7, in Works, 2:301-302. 205 Laud, Conference, in Works, 2:340-341. On the third point, see also Cosin, 255: ‘God does not now require any more Levitical sacrifices, … but he requires the sacrificing of ourselves, not by killing our bodies, but by mortifying and destroying our carnal affections, and by sanctification of life, to offer up and consecrate ourselves to Him.’ 206 Waterland, Review, in Works, 4:488. 207 Jones, Hebrews, in Works, 3:254-255. 208 Johnson, Unbloody Sacrifice, 120-121, 135. 209 Waterland, Review, in Works, 4:499-512. 210 Jones, Hebrews, in Works, 3:254-255. 211 Johnson, Unbloody Sacrifice, 183-219. Johnson interprets φ παξ (Heb. 10:10) as ‘at the same time,’ i.e. that the Church is consecrated simultaneously with Christ’s High Priestly consecration, rather than ‘once for all’ as is common in the translations stemming from the Authorized Version. 212 Waterland, Review, in Works, 4:707-712. 213 Johnson, Unbloody Sacrifice, 227-228.

189 214 Johnson, Unbloody Sacrifice, 72; 86-95; 133; Waterland, Review, in Works, 4:728-229. 215 Ibid., 144-145; 163-164. 216 Ibid., 120-121. 217 Waterland, Review, in Works, 4:753. 218 Johnson, Unbloody Sacrifice, 120-121, 175-176. 219 Ibid., 361-384, 394-401. 220 Waterland, ‘Christian Sacrifice,’ in Works, 5:147-149; Review, in Works, 4:725. 221 Waterland, Review, in Works, 4:730-731. 222 Waterland, Review, in Works, 4:760-761. 223 Waterland, ‘Christ’s Sacrifice of Himself Explained; and Man’s Duty to Offer Spiritual Sacrifice Inferred and Recommended,’ in Works, 5:745-746. 224 Jones, Churchman’s Catechism, in Works, 5:433. 225 Palmer, Origines Liturgicae, or Antiquities of the English Ritual, and a Dissertation on Primitive Liturgies (Oxford: the University Press, 1832), 1:14, 71-72. 226 Wordsworth, 215-216. 227 Saepius Officio, 13-14. 228 Pusey, Tract 81, 4-10. 229 Staley, 156-160. 230 E.g. Pusey, Tract 68, 79-80. 231 Gore, The Body of Christ: An Enquiry into the Institution and Doctrine of Holy Communion (London: John Murray, 1901), 174-181; Moberly, 231-233. 232 Moberly, 246. 233 Ibid., 246. 234 Moberly 244-246. 235 Gore, Body, 167. 236 Lock, 391-392. 237 Gore, Body, 168-172. 238 Moberly, 251, 254. 239 Gore, Body, 199-201; cf. Moberly, 254-255. 240 Gore, Body, 212; cf. Ramsey, Gospel, 96-102. 241 Will Spens, ‘The Eucharist,’ in Essays Catholic and Critical, ed. Edward , 3rd ed. (London: SPCK, 1929), 434-436. 242 Mascall, Christ, the Christian, and the Church, 121-122, 182, 196-199; Corpus Christi, 30-31, 84-87; Women, 18-20. 243 Mascall, Corpus Christi, 107-108. 244 Mascall, Women, 21. 245 Ibid., Women, 18. 246 Saepius Officio, 22-23. 247 Hooker, V.lxxviii.2-3. 248 Hooker, V.lxxviii.2-3. 249 Laud, ‘Bishop’s Power in Civil Affairs,’ in Works 6:166. 250 Leslie, Discourse, in Works, 7:108-110; Regale, in Works, 3:308-309. 251 Leslie, Regale, in Works, 3:408-409. 252 Leslie, Regale, in Works, 3:528-531.

190 253 Johnson, Unbloody Sacrifice, 201. 254 Ibid., 207-208. 255 Ibid., 434-441. 256 Waterland, Review, in Works, 4:753. 257 Jones, Hebrews, in Works, 3:224-225 258 Jones, Essay, in Works, 5:23-24. 259 Waterland, Review, in Works, 4:763-764. 260 Saepius Officio, 13-14. 261 Perceval, 53. 262 Waterland, ‘The Christian Sacrifice,’ in Works, 5:137-138. 263 Wordsworth, 77; cf. 1 Cor. 14:16. 264 Waterland, Review, in Works, 4:763-764. For Waterland, ministers are ‘priests, or liturgs,’ leitourgia being defined as ‘sacerdotal ministrations.’ Ibid., 4:731-734. 265 Ibid., 4:731. 266 Wordsworth, 134-137; cf. Jas. 5:14, Rev. 5:8. 267 Ibid., 138-142. 268 Ibid., 137. He supports this conclusion with a wide array of sources, ranging from the highest of High Churchmen to the Puritan Richard Baxter. 269 Ibid., 142-145. 270 Saepius Officio, 35-36. 271 Ibid., 32-34. 272 Given in Moberly, 96-97. 273 Lock, 391-393. 274 Liddon, given in Moberly, 96-97; Lock, 391-393; cf. Ramsey, Gospel, 96-102. 275 Gore, Ministry, 85-86. 276 Lock, 391-393. 277 Ibid., 391-393. 278 Staley, 211. 279 Ibid., 210. 280 Gore, Ministry, 83-85. 281 Moberly, 258; cf. Gore, Ministry, 196-200; Ramsey, Gospel, 96-102. 282 Liddon, given in Moberly, 96-97; cf. Gore, Ministry, 338, Moberly, 261-262. 283 Moberly, 225-226, 263-285. 284 Gore, Unity, 18-35. 285 Gore, Unity, 60-67. 286 Ibid., 155-167. 287 Ramsey, The Christian Priest Today (New York: Morehouse-Barlow, 1972), 6-10. 288 Spens, 437. 289 Mascall, Corpus Christi, 2-3, 32-33; Christ, the Christian, and the Church, 121-122. 290 Mascall, Recovery, 190; Women, 18-19, 22. 291 Hooker, VII.ii.2. 292 Andrewes, Summary View, in Works, 6:358-360; cf. Wordsworth, 95-100. 293 Leslie, Discourse, in Works, 7:105-106.

191 294 Hooker, VII.iv.1; VII.v.1. See also the discussion of the twelve and the seventy in Chapter I above. 295 Hooker, V.lxxviii.6-7; VII.iv.2-3; Andrewes, Summary View, in Works, 6:358-360; Convocation Book, 135-139; Leslie, Discourse, in Works, 7:100-102; Jones, Hebrews, in Works, 2:250-252; Palmer, Treatise, 2:288-289; Newman, Tract 7, 6; Thomas Keble, Tract 12, 6-15; Harrison, Tract 24, 7-8. 296 Hooker, VII.v.2; Andrewes, Summary View, in Works, 6:351-356; Perceval, Collection, 56; Wordsworth, 95-100; Palmer, Treatise, 2:288-289; Bowden, Tract 5, 7-9; T. Keble, Tract 12, 6-15. 297 Perceval, 56. 298 Wordsworth, 88-90. 299 Hooker, V.lxxviii.6-7; Andrewes, Summary View, in Works, 6:355; Convocation Book, 135-136; Palmer, Treatise, 2:288-289. 300 Hooker, V.lxxviii.6-7; Andrewes, Summary View, in Works, 6:354-355; Convocation Book, 134-135. 301 Hooker, VII.iv.2-3; VII.vi.3, 8; Andrewes, Summary View, in Works, 6:355-356; Convocation Book, 137-139; Palmer, Treatise, 2:288-289. 302 Hooker, VII.vii-viii; Palmer, Treatise, 2:301-304. 303 Gore’s argument is accepted in its main features by both Ramsey and Mascall. Ramsey, Gospel, 62-66; Mascall, Women, 20-21. 304 Gore, Ministry, 224-246. 305 Ibid., 246-249. 306 Ibid., 273-276; Moberly, 130-135. 307 Gore, Ministry, 276-285; Moberly, 158-168. The Didache was rediscovered in the late 19th century and published in 1883. Gore does not have a very high estimation of it, describing its theology as ‘very inadequate’ - indeed, in a later work concerns about the itinerant ministers it describes leads him to subtract them from his hypothesis completely. Gore, Unity, 113-114. 308 Gore, Unity, 76-141. 309 There were some notable exceptions: , for instance, was ordained deacon in order to lead the daily office for the quasi-monastic life his family led at . These exceptions, however, were not significant enough to generate reflection on the diaconal order itself. 310 Mascall, Unity, 180-181. 311 Hooker, V.lxxviii.5. 312 Andrewes, Certain Sermons, no. 2, in Works, 5:65. Emphasis added. 313 Palmer, Treatise, 2:282. 314 Ibid., 2:305-307. 315 Moberly, 136-140. 316 Hooker, V.lxvii.11. 317 Andrewes, Of the Resurrection, no. 9, in Works, 2:334-335. 318 Laud, Conference, in Works, 2:328, citing Calvin, In 1 Cor. 10:3, 11:24. Cf. also Cosin, 131-132, 345-346; and Palmer, Treatise, 1:401-405. 319 Hooker, V.lxvii.2, emphasis Hooker’s. 320 Andrewes, Certain Sermons, no. 2, in Works, 5:66-67. 321 Hooker, V.lxvii.2, 10. ‘Consubstantiation,’ like so many terms, was pejorative in its origin, and was meant by enemies of the Lutheran doctrine to imply just what Hooker took it to mean - the claim that Christ and the bread were made ‘consubstantial.’ This is not, however, a fair portrayal of the

192 Lutheran doctrine, which maintains simply the continuing reality of the bread and the presence of Christ ‘in, with, and under’ it. 322 Ibid., V.lxvii.2, 5-6. 323 For Hooker’s discussion, see V.lv. 324 Calvin, Institutes, IV.17.10. 325 Hooker, V.lxvii.7; see also Andrewes’ language of the ‘benefits’ of communion, given above. 326 Pusey, ‘The Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist’ (Oxford: James Parker, 1871), 21-22. 327 Ibid., 21. 328 They are assisted in this by two factors. First, though Pusey never adopted the doctrine himself, he eventually reached the conclusion that the term itself was ambiguous, and that it might be explained in a way compatible with the concerns evident in Article 28, if the article is read as stating specific objections to the doctrine rather than merely a blanket condemnation. For Pusey, this was a matter to be determined by the Roman magisterium in the interests of ecumenism; in Anglo-Catholicism, however, the pattern Pusey outlined has frequently been adopted by individuals. Second, since the later part of the nineteenth century, subscription to the Articles has been either weakened or abolished in various churches of the Anglican Communion, thus diluting the force of that Article’s influence. See Pusey, Is Healthful Reunion Impossible? A Second Letter to the Very Rev. J.H. Newman, D.D. (Oxford: James Parker, 1870), 79-88. 329 Johnson, Unbloody Sacrifice, 227-228, 251. 330 Ibid., 267-268. 331 Johnson, Unbloody Sacrifice, 272-273. 332 Ibid., 306-310 333 Waterland, Review, in Works, 4:753; emphasis Waterland’s. 334 Ibid., 4:579, 609; emphasis Waterland’s. 335 Ibid., 4:573-574; ‘The Sacramental Part of the Eucharist Explained,’ in Works, 5:192-3; emphasis Waterland’s. 336 Hooker, V.lxvii.11; V.lxxvii.8. 337 Waterland, Review, in Works, 4:530; 573-574. 338 Pusey, ‘Presence,’ 22.

193 Anglican Charismatics in the Modern West, and the Church

The Holy Spirit in the Church

The First Pauline Churches

St. Paul understood his early churches to be the central symbol of the New Creation, of the coming kingdom of Christ projected forward into the 1st century.

The community of baptized believers, rooted by that baptism and by that faith in the Messiah himself, became for Paul not only the central locus but also the key visible symbol 1 of the transformed worldview.

As such these communities evinced several key qualities.

First of all, they were both constituted and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Gordon Fee summarizes the work of the Spirit in the early Christian communities.

The experience of the Spirit is the key to (Paul's) already/not yet eschatological framework; the Spirit is the essential player in the believers' experiencing and living out the salvation that God has brought about in Christ; the Spirit both forms the church into God's new (eschatological) people and conforms them into Christ's image through his fruit in their lives; and the Spirit gifts them in worship to edify and encourage one another in 2 their ongoing life in the world.

Secondly, the early Pauline communities - as they were the image of Christ's future kingdom on earth projected forward into the present - embodied a moral principle that was radically at variance with the dominant honor/shame assumptions of the ambient Greco- Roman society. Jesus had turned earthly hierarchies on their heads when he had asserted that "the greatest among you must be least of all." So in I Corinthians 12, writes Ben Witherington,

...Paul's use of body imagery is at variance with the usual use of such imagery. Instead of using it to support an existing hierarchy where the lesser members of society serve the greater, Paul uses it to relativize the sense of self- importance of those of higher status, making them see the importance and necessity of the weaker, lower-status, Corinthian Christians. Paul questions

194 the usual linking of high social status and honor by saying that God gives 3 more honor to the "less presentable members."

While Paul does rank the gifts of the Spirit in a certain order, with apostles, prophets and teachers most foundational because they minister the word of God, this is an order of humble service, not of personal honor.4 Likewise, the early elders' ministry of "supervision" was understood as lowly service. So if there was a triangular structure of ministry in the early Pauline communities, the triangle had its apex at the bottom and not at the top. And likewise the leaders performed their services on the basis of the Spirit's gifts, not by succeeding to an authoritative office.

Thirdly, these end-time-communities-in-the-present featured gifts and operations of the Spirit in all and by all. In addition to the three foundational word-gifts (apostles and prophets and teachers, above), many other gifts were distributed amongst all the members of the communities. The variations amongst the lists of gifts (in I Corinthians 12, Romans 12, Ephesians 4 and so on) suggest that there was no fixed standard nor an exclusive table of gifts, but a creative variety as the Spirit bestowed and directed. The criterion for validity was not the appearance of an item on one of Paul's lists, but the utility of the function for building up the "house of God" (Paul repeatedly uses the verb oikodomein e.g. in I Corinthians 14). From this point of view, prophecy was more "edifying" than tongues. But tongues flourished as well.

Finally, since "(t)he Spirit is the presence of God's future"5 it was natural that the early Christian communities felt a strong sense that "God's future" was imminent. Marana tha was a prayer that the 1st century Christians expected to be answered very soon. Paul seemed 6 to anticipate that Christ would return during Paul's own lifetime.

These four characteristics would reappear from time to time over the next two thousand years, as movements sought to recapture the power of the Holy Spirit that the early Christian communities had evidently enjoyed.

"Institutions" and "Restorations" in the Ante-Nicene Church

Very soon, the early Christian communities began to assume a more institutional structure of leadership, which survival of the churches made necessary in the maelstrom of the Roman cities. It seems likely that the first Pauline churches were led by a collective group of elders, as in I Thessalonians 5:12:

195

But we beseech you, brethren, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work.

It was evidently not long before this leadership, construed as "labor", began to assume a more "official" character. Many scholars trace the emergence of the threefold ministry to the later New Testament writings.7 Whatever the case; we see a clearly articulated ministry of bishops, presbyters and deacons in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch in the early second century. Ignatius may be asserting the authority of the monarchial bishop strongly because it was relatively new. About twenty years earlier, Clement of Rome had still assumed a collegial presbyterate when he wrote to the Corinthian churches. However, the evident utility of the monarchial episcopate commended itself to communities of house churches in other Roman cities (as for example Rome, where the heretic Valentinus was almost elected "bishop" in 143).8 By the time of Irenaeus of Lyon in the 190s, the threefold structure of leadership and the monarchial episcopate were firmly in place, and were assumed to have been so since the very beginning. Speaking of the apostolic tradition of true teaching, Irenaeus alludes to:

the tradition which that very great, oldest, and well-known Church, founded and established in Rome by those two most glorious apostles Peter and Paul, received from the apostles, and its faith known among men, which comes 9 down to us through the succession of bishops...

The late 2nd century church was addressing the problem of authority in the churches (absent the return of Christ) by recognizing a "threefold cord" consisting of the New Testament canon, the tradition of apostolic teaching that helped to interpret the Scriptures, and the succession of "true teachers" like the bishops of Rome to whom Irenaeus alludes. These three interwoven elements gave the Christian movement a coherence that enabled it to survive, a coherence of leadership and teaching that its major competitors (such as the "mystery religions" of Isis and Mithras) wholly lacked.

Not all 2nd century Christians were persuaded that these developments were either healthy or true to the legacy of Jesus. The Montanist movement, beginning in the 170s, represented the first widespread movement to "restore" certain features of the mid 1st century churches that seemed to have dwindled and disappeared in the intervening decades. Montanus was a Christian presbyter in western Asia Minor. He and his two female companions Prisca and Maximilla began to prophesy under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Their followers practiced an extreme , and an eagerness for martyrdom.

196 Also the Montanists believed that the return of Christ was imminent, and that the parousia would take place near the village of Pepuza near Philadelphia in western Asia Minor. Many Christians in the area sold their belongings and flocked to this deserted region, to wait for the descent of the . The failure of this event to occur dampened the apocalyptic expectations of the Montanists, but the movement spread widely (for example to Carthage in North Africa) emphasizing the themes of "new prophecy," asceticism and martyrdom. It seems likely that the early North African martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas (AD 202) were influenced by Montanist teaching, and that Tertullian joined a Montanist 10 congregation in Carthage in his later years.

Scholars have debated the roots of Montanism. Certainly there were elements of Jewish-Christian apocalyptic teaching in western Asia Minor, for example in Philadelphia. Likewise there were strong currents of orgiastic worship in the area, especially in the local mystery cult of Attis and Cybele, which may have bled over into Montanism. In any case, the more staid and orderly leaders of the Christian movement were horrified. They were naturally loath to quench the Holy Spirit, but they had to condemn the movement when its prophets began to suggest that the Montanists were the only true Christians, and that their prophetic words superseded the emerging New Testament canon. By the mid 3rd century, the bishops in the Roman cities had driven out Montanist teaching from their house- churches. But Montanism persisted amongst the peasant villages in western Asia Minor, including the apocalyptic expectations that had not died at Pepuza. As the paradigm of a "restorationist" movement, protesting against the growing institutional nature of the early Church, Montanism cast a long shadow. When conditions were ripe, similar restorationist groups would appear, ever since the second century. As we will argue, the Anglican Charismatic revival stands foursquare in this tradition that has yearned to revive the Spirit- 11 filled power of the early Pauline communities.

The rise of early monasticism in Egypt in the 270s also represented a restorationist movement. This was initially a movement of the rural peasantry, who had many reasons to feel alienated from the cities.12 The cities were the seat of the government, whose ruthless taxation bled the countryside white, in the interest of maintaining the Roman army and restoring order after the chaos of the foreign invasions in the mid 3rd century. Many peasant communities of that time simply abandoned their villages and fled to the Egyptian desert. Scraps of papyrus from this period bear questions submitted by peasants to astrologers, such as "If I flee, will the soldiers catch me?" But beginning in the 270s, Christians also began to take refuge in the Egyptian deserts, for spiritual as well as social and economic reasons. St. Anthony was the most famous of these early Desert Fathers, thanks to his biographer Athanasius of Alexandria. As the Hebrews had met God in the desert, as Jesus had fasted and prayed against the tempter in the wilderness of Judea, so Anthony and his disciples went out from their villages to seek God. Specifically they sought to recapture and revive the lifestyle of Jesus and his early disciples in their mission to Galilee. Even in the late 3rd

197 century, before the "peace of the Church" under the emperor Constantine, Christians in the cities seemed - to many peasants like Anthony - to be living compromised lives. The urban churches were growing in wealth and social prominence. How could sincere and earnest Christians escape the moral cesspools of the Roman cities? They had no illusions about the desert. It was where demons bred. But in the prayerful struggle against these foes, the Desert Fathers and Mothers hoped to restore the life of the earliest Christian communities. Benedicta Ward says that:

...many recognized in their lives a continuation of the eschatological attitudes of the early church, where Christians were aware of themselves as living in 13 the last days, eagerly awaiting the consummation of all things...

And as W.H.C. Frend put it, "Almost for the first time in three centuries the Lord's commands were being accepted literally by Christ's followers." 14

The patronage that Constantine showered on the Christian movement further exacerbated the problem that Anthony's generation had felt so acutely. Not only were tidal waves of converts turning to Christianity without the rigorous catechetical preparation of earlier centuries. Bishops were becoming courtiers, wearing fine clothes and beginning to build beautiful and expensive churches. Resisting this acculturation, greater and greater numbers of men and women fled to the deserts, not only in Egypt but in Palestine and Syria as well - and westward, as pioneers like Martin of Tours introduced the monastic life to the 15 Loire valley in the 360s.

The Constantinian revolution not only swelled the ranks of those who sought in the desert a restoration of the early Church's zeal. While continuing to affirm (and indeed to practice) monasticism, theologians of the new order actively discouraged certain aspects of restorationist movements in the past. Millennial fervor was a special threat to the new alliance of Church and Empire. People who waited out in the desert for the descent of the New Jerusalem were apt to pay less attention to the authorities of this world than they ought to. Augustine for example said that the "millennial reign of Christ and the saints" referred to this present age since Christ's ascension, not to some imminent overthrow of the present world order.16 Likewise, while Augustine still acknowledged that miracles of healing still occurred17 he did not hesitate to invoke the Empire's violent force to repress dissident movements like the Donatiststs in which emotionalism lay close beneath the surface.

By the end of the 5th century, then, the Western Church had by and large made its choice for the "institutional" option, while discouraging the "restorationist" longings - or domesticating them in the form of monastic movements that that the Church and its military allies could more or less hope to control.

198 A Recurrent Pattern of

It is not necessary to follow the long history of decline and restoration in the medieval Church. After the restoration of social order in the (post-Viking) 11th century, the economic revival, and the growth of towns, the conditions for popular millenarian enthusiasm reappeared. It is useful to recollect that subsequent restorationist movements typically exhibited many of the features of the Montanists in the late 2nd century. There were apocalyptic and millenarian , inspiring people to leave their homes, follow self- proclaimed reformers like Peter the Hermit in the 1090s, and march off to seek the New Jerusalem, sometimes geographically identifying it with the Old Jerusalem. Looking forward to the Eng of the Age, these popular movements also looked backward, yearning for the (assumed) purity of the Jerusalem church in Acts 2. Many groups likewise believed that they were uniquely endowed with the Holy Spirit, giving them supernatural powers and liberating them from conventional social (and indeed moral) obligations. Amongst these restorationist movements were the People's Crusade in the 1090s, the followers of Joachim of Fiore in the 1190s, The Waldensians around the same time, the sectarians of the "Free Spirit" in early 13th century Paris, the Bohemian Taborites in the late 14th century, and ultimately the Anabaptists in Germany and the Low Countries in the early years of the Reformation. All of them came to violent ends, which did not prevent new generations of earnest reformers from repeating 18 the restorationist pattern afresh.

All of which supplies a background for the Methodist movement in the 18th century, the great restorationist revival in the Anglican tradition, and the ancestor of the Charismatic renewal in the 20th century.

But were the Wesleyans in fact the first such popular upheaval in the Anglican tradition, attempting to restore the imagined life of the early Church? What about the Wycliffites (the so-called Lollards) and the Peasants' Revolt in the 1380s and following? In this instance, the combined weight of Church and Monarchy fell upon these overlapping groups almost immediately, brutally repressing the peasants and driving the Lollards underground. The Parliamentary act De Heretico Comburendo ("On the Burning of Heretics") of 1401 typified the negative and successful response of the English aristocracy to the hope of Christian restoration in the late 14th century. So while Wycliffe and the Lollards represented in certain respects a revival of the restorationist tradition in England, they didn't 19 last long as a potent movement.

What about the Puritan movement in England in the century between 1560 and 1660? Didn't that revival constitute a successful restorationist attempt in the Church of England and in English society? The answer was ultimately No, though the prospects looked hopeful from time to time. Elizabethan Puritans initially sought to bring grass-roots reform

199 at the parish level in England, while simultaneously pressing its case in Parliament. The Puritans (for fear of their lives) abjured and deplored the emotionalist fervor of the Anabaptists on the Continent. But they wanted more Gospel preaching, more prayer meetings, more Bible reading, in general a conversion of the English people to the piety of the early Church (now accessible to the reading public through the printing press). Queen Elizabeth I feared religious enthusiasm in all its forms, keeping her eye on the Wars of Religion brewing across the English Channel. She managed to drive the Puritan movement out of the Church's leadership by the 1590s.20At this point, Puritan energies turned to society and to politics, with a view to forcing England to live up to its calling to be the "New Israel," God's Elect, the defenders of the Gospel against the wicked Rome-Madrid axis.21 The Stuart dynasty proved singularly inept in handling this potentially explosive aspiration, which found much support in the London lawyers and in the county gentry. At last the lid blew off. King Charles I raised an army in 1642 and declared war on Parliament, which his enemies had come to dominate. In the period of the Civil War (1642-1649) and the Cromwellian Interregnum (1649-1660), dozens of independent popular sects flourished: exhibiting all the colorful features of medieval restorationist movements. Ranters, Diggers, Quakers, Sweet Singers of Israel (who worshiped in the nude) and many other exuberant groups proliferated under Oliver Cromwell's policy of religious toleration. In these lower- class groups, all manner of gifts flourished...prophecies, tongues, swoons, gyrations, apocalyptic dreams.22 All this frightened the English aristocracy profoundly, including those Presbyterians who had fought for the Parliamentarian cause. So when the Cromwellian experiment fizzled out after the leader's death in 1658, the English "political nation" (the upper 3% who counted) brought back the monarchy and the Church of England. So the ultimate verdict on the Puritan movement was No. It did not succeed in establishing a lasting revival movement in Church or society. But after its erstwhile leaders had been driven out of the Church in the 1660s, into "dissenting sects" like the and the Presbyterians, those idealistic energies persisted in exile, and supplied many of the ideals of the Methodist revival in the next century.

200 The Wesleyan Revival

John Wesley's Ministry

John Wesley (1703-1791) graduated from Oxford and was ordained with a clear intellectual grasp of the Gospel and a passion for holiness, but an imperfect understanding of grace. A missionary call to Georgia in 1735 ended in failure, as Wesley was unable to evoke any response from the native Americans, and mishandled a courtship with a local woman with embarrassing ineptitude. Upon his return to London he experienced a profound change in his faith - as he said, he felt his heart strangely warmed. At the request of his friend George Whitefield, Wesley journeyed to Bristol in 1739. There he discovered his friend's success in field-preaching, and undertook it himself. Thus began an itinerant ministry that lasted until Wesley's death in 1791. As he preached and reflected on the lives of his converts, he began to believe that the Holy Spirit was doing a new thing through his ministry and through the network of lay-led "class meetings" that he built. Out of this reflection, Wesley developed many of the themes that would late be picked up and th 23 elaborated by the Pentecostal movement in the 20 century.

During his annual preaching circuits in England, Wesley presented an evangelical message centered on the merciful love and mighty acts of God in Christ to intervene and save sinners. His open- air sermons were often followed by mass conversions, in the course of which the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit frequently appeared. Wesley recorded events of spontaneous deliverance, miraculous healing and people falling, trembling, roaring, crying or laughing. Wesley neither encouraged nor discouraged these occurrences. He believed that the Spirit offered these gifts at all times in the Church's history. But beginning with "the fatal period when the Emperor Constantine called himself a Christian,"24 the Church had grown worldly and ceased to welcome the Spirit's ministry. Now everything had changed, at least amongst Wesley's converts. Of course Wesley was primarily interested in and kept his eyes on the growing fruit of the Spirit changed lives. Despite the fruitfulness of his ministry, Wesley, like the Puritans before him, was accused of “enthusiasm,” that dreaded, derogatory term denoting mindless, irrational, excessively emotional responses that allegedly forsook the Scriptures for dependence upon purely subjective experiences. Yet Wesley remained strongly tethered to the Word, studying and recalling Scripture, which confirmed 25 that these events were more than the irrational imaginings of ignorant fanatics.

Based on his observations, Wesley stressed a , which he described as “entire sanctification” or “.” But it is important to note a clear distinction between some restorationists' notion of absolute perfection and Wesley's perception of “entire sanctification.” Some sects believed they had reached a state of “sinless

201 perfection” in which they could not ever do any wrong regardless of what it might be. This delusional belief excused lewd and evil behavior and consequently, they were branded as heretics and persecuted. Wesley's “Christian perfection” or "entire sanctification" had to do with the Spirit's gift of pure motives and desires. Wesley taught that true believers could be victorious over willful sin by encountering Jesus Christ personally and practicing spiritual disciplines within the context of godly fellowship and support. “Total sinless perfection would come only after death.” He spoke of this encounter as a “second blessing” for 26 believers who had already had an initial conversion experience.

Wesley is lauded for developing a method for the ongoing sanctification of believers, the genesis of what later became the Wesleyan and Methodist denominations. His class meetings, bands and select societies provided incubators where members were warmed by the light of the Word, tended by Christian affection, and nurtured by a faith-filled expectancy of God present with and among his people by the Holy Spirit. These groupings were marked by mutual accountability and an egalitarian ethic whereby both men and women progressed to positions of leadership in group settings. Those with exceptional skills were promoted to a select group of traveling lay preachers under Wesley's direct supervision. Countless men and women faithfully built the Kingdom by teaching, testifying, edifying (i.e. preaching), and ministering God's compassion and truth wherever they went. Wesley noted the fruitful ministry of women in the church and, even amidst controversy, greatly encouraged them and 27 promoted women to positions of leadership.

The Methodist movement remained a "para-church" phenomenon in Wesley's own lifetime. He was not interested in reforming the historic structures of the English Church, for no mechanism existed whereby structural change might be effected. Convocation met only once between 1717 and 1851. Rather, Wesley focused on developing true Christians who displayed the fruit of virtuous living, an outward sign of inward devotion and authentic spiritual growth. A corollary impact resulted: both sacred and secular institutions were affected and changed as individuals in the nation grew in holiness and purposeful,

sanctified living.

Methodism and the Restoration of Early Christian Life and Ministry

It was significant that Wesley inaugurated his field-preaching in 1738 with a sermon on Isaiah 61, recalling Jesus' sermon in Nazareth on the same text. Describing his earlier reticence about field- preaching and his subsequent liberation from inhibition, Wesley wrote in his diary,

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In the evening I reached Bristol and met Mr. Whitefield there. I could scarce reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me an example on Sunday; having been all my life (until very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church... At four in the afternoon I submitted to be more vile, and proclaimed in the highway the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining, the city, to about three thousand people. The scripture on which I spoke was this..."The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 28 because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor."

Wesley believed that the Gospel, the Holy Spirit, and ministry to the poor belonged together, just as they had in the Jerusalem Church in the Book of Acts. However, he thought that the Church's early period of purity extended no farther forward than the New Testament era itself, and that corruption had set in very soon thereafter. Hence Wesley looked on the Montanist movement with favor. He said of Montanus that he had been:

one of the best men then upon earth...under the character of a Prophet, as an order established in the Church, appeared (without bringing any new doctrine) for reviving what was decayed, and reforming what might be 29 amiss.

Seeing himself as he did, in the tradition of restorationist reformers like Montanus, what specific theological values did Wesley and early assert?

First of all, Wesley re-emphasized the Biblical themes that had been central to mainstream Puritanism, and which he believed to reflect the convictions of the 1st century church. He stressed the authority of Scripture as the norm for Christian faith and conduct - an emphasis that had suffered neglect in the past three generations, thanks to the rationalist skepticism of the Latitudinarian leadership in the Church of England. Likewise Wesley insisted on the Cross as the center of the Biblical story, and the doctrine of substitutionary atonement that was founded thereupon. And like the Puritans, Wesley insisted on the need for a specific experience of conversion in a Christian's life. One had to be able to testify to 30 the "Great Change" in order to be certain of one's salvation.

But second, Wesley also emphasized certain themes that were new (though biblical, he thought) and were discontinuous with the Puritan heritage. As he observed the lives of his converts, Wesley noticed that even the most recent believers exhibited an assurance of their salvation that surprised him. The Puritans had thought that the Holy Spirit granted

203 assurance rarely in this life, perhaps to a few aged and faithful saints. But here were neophytes, sincerely testifying to a profound confidence that Jesus had saved them, without a doubt. Here we may see a parallel between Wesley's teaching, and certain themes that characterized the English Enlightenment. It would be going beyond the evidence, to say that the latter had influenced the former. Nevertheless, we notice in Wesley's theology a confidence in the human power to know, thanks to a new "sixth sense" given after conversion by the Holy Spirit. Obviously Enlightenment thinkers like Locke had a different kind of "knowing" in mind, and attributed that new power to other sources than the Holy 31 Spirit. But the parallel is intriguing.

In the doctrine of assurance we meet an aspect of Wesley's teaching that distinguished it from that of other restorationist movements over the past fifteen centuries. There is just a hint of optimism about the course of history - a sense that things might just improve a bit before Our Lord's return. Previous groups like the Anabaptists had generally thought that this world as a whole was pretty bad, though little beach-heads of the Kingdom (their gathered communities) might anticipate the joy and peace of the Lord's reign to come. There is certainly nothing in Wesley's teaching like a fully- developed, late 19th-century doctrine of linear human progress. But there is a sense that with the Methodist revival, his followers were experiencing the best era since the New Testament church.The Holy Spirit was doing - if not an absolutely New Thing - certainly a recapitulation of the Old Thing that had not been seen 32 since the first century.

This brings us to Wesley's much-misunderstood idea of "entire sanctification." He certainly did believe - on the evidence of his converts' testimony - that the Holy Spirit was liberating people from the addictive power of habitual sin. The miners in the Kingswood near Bristol were undoubtedly being freed from their erstwhile addiction to cheap gin. But unlike previous teachers like the leaders of the Free Spirits in the late middle ages, Wesley did not assert that his converts were absolutely incapable of sinning, or that whatever they did was ipso facto holy, righteous and good. Christians continued to blunder, to fall back temporarily into old habits, to make mistakes. But Wesley thought that the deadly power of sin in a believer's life was broken, and that further experiences of the Holy Spirit made regrettable lapses increasingly rare. Human perfectibility? Yes, in a qualified sense. And all 33 due entirely to the Holy Spirit.

What about the "signs and wonders" that that the Holy Spirit had evidently poured out on the early Christian churches, especially in the context of worship? Certainly there were outbreaks of emotionalism, of the kind that had terrified aristocrats in the sectarian heyday of the 1650s. Wesley wrote in his diary of one occasion,

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Some sunk down, and there remained no strength in them; others exceedingly trembled and quaked, some were torn with a kind of convulsive motion in every part of their bodies, and that so violently that four or five persons could not hold one of them...One woman was greatly offended, being sure that they might help it if they would - no one should persuade her to the contrary; and was got three or four yards, when she also dropped 34 down in as violent agony as the rest.

Wesley discouraged these manifestations when he could, and emphasized that the fruits of the Spirit were far more pleasing to God than the more alarming (though Biblical) gifts of the same Spirit. But the gifts persisted. Later, a century and more after Wesley's death, the gifts were to assume a far more significant place in the Christian life than the 18th century Methodist movement would have conceded.

Finally, what about offices and ministries, in the Church of England and in the Methodist movement? This issue inevitably arose when Wesley began appointing lay preachers, under his supervision, to evangelize and to make disciples of converts. This practice naturally involved the violation of parish boundaries and ran afoul of canon law. Wesley justified his own itinerant preaching on the grounds that his fellowship at Lincoln College Oxford gave him the right to preach anywhere. But the preachers that he appointed? Wesley argued that while parish priests inherited the Biblical offices of pastor and teacher, his preachers were extraordinary evangelists (a distinct and separate calling) that revived the flexible practice of the New Testament church.35 As for bishops, Wesley argued as early as 1755 that in the New Testament, bishops and presbyters were a single order, and that therefore he had as much right to ordain as any bishop did. In a letter to his brother Charles, John Wesley claimed to be "a scriptural episkopos as much as any man in England or in Europe."36 He was loath to exercise this authority throughout most of his life, as he wanted to keep in touch with the Church of England as closely as possible (and indeed he died in Anglican orders and in formal communion with the Church). But in the 1780s, when pressed to provide oversight and sacraments for Methodists in America, Wesley did not hesitate. In September, 1784 he "ordained" Thomas Coke as bishop for America, and Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vesey as presbyters. Wesley not only believed that the New Testament prescribed "no determinate plan for church-government,"37 but that pastoral necessity and the authority of the Holy Spirit gave him the right to violate extant canon law in the interests of spreading the Gospel. As to whether one should obey God or humans, Wesley's opinion was clear. The Holy Spirit's impulse trumped what he viewed as human institutions.

205 19th Century Methodism in the and 20th Century

The Methodist movement gave birth to the Pentecostal churches gradually over the course of the 19th century in America.38 In the 1760s certain Methodist lay leaders had come over to the Colonies, and in 1770 two lay preachers followed them, organizing class meetings in New York and Philadelphia. In the fall of 1784 Thomas Coke came over to organize a Methodist Church in the newly independent United States. The new denomination grew very rapidly, adapting to the trans-Allegheny migration by appointing circuit-riders who preached and organized class meetings in the wild frontier of Ohio and Kentucky and beyond. By 1850 the Methodist Church was the largest denomination in America, with only the Baptists 39 close behind them.

Methodism grew in America on the crest of three interwoven revivals in the early Republic. The first in time was the Second in New England, beginning in the late 1790s with revivals on Congregational churches in the Connecticut Valley. This awakening was relatively sedate, and depended largely on settled pastors preaching to established congregations. A second strand of renewal caught fire in the 1820s under the leadership of , who introduced interdenominational revivals in the small cities of upstate New York. Finney organized torchlight parades, rented halls, massed choirs, fiery preaching (reminding the Lord about notorious local sinners by name) and an "anxious bench" down in front where penitents could come and weep while the crowd prayed for them to experience conversion. Finney was adamant that God ordained "means" whereby sinners might be converted - it was useless to wait for divine lightning to strike. This same optimistic activism characterized the third great early 19th century revival, associated with rural "camp meetings" and begun at Cane Ridge, Kentucky in 1801 under the Presbyterian revivalist Barton Warren Stone. Despite the long distances between settlements on the lonely frontier, rumors traveled fast and in August, 1801 nearly twenty-five thousand people flocked to Cane Ridge. These camp meetings featured round-the- clock preaching from the back of Conestoga wagons, vigorous and emotional outbursts from the excited crowds (the "dancing exercise," the "barking exercise" and so on), and brief but intense 40 fellowship that the isolated and anxious settlers craved.

In the ante-bellum period the Methodist Church generally tolerated these three strands of revival. However, as the denomination grew and prospered, wealthier urban middle-class congregations began to feel uncomfortable with annual "tent meetings" and their attendant emotionalism. So in the later 19th century, conference after conference began to prohibit their ministers from participating in these revivals. The net result was that between 1880 and the end of World War I, more than twenty new denominations hived off from the Methodist Church, seeking freedom to experience the Holy Spirit as they desired. Some of these groups were relatively sedate, such as the Church of the Nazarene. Others however bore more incandescent names, like "The Burning Bush" and "The Pillar of Fire."41

206 In this latter category was the former Methodist preacher Benjamin Irwin, who represented a crucial step towards 20th century Pentecostalism. Irwin came to believe that God wanted his people to experience not only the "first baptism" of conversion and the "second baptism" of sanctification (codifying the latter rather more specifically than Wesley had). In the 1890s Irwin began to preach a"third baptism" in the Holy Spirit and in fire, evoking reactions from midwestern congregations that rivaled the "exercises" at Cane Ridge nearly a century before. This "baptism in the Holy Spirit" filled its recipients with new energy for mission, as had been the case on the original Day of Pentecost. So it seemed that on the eve of the 20th century, God was offering to restore the pristine dynamism of the Jerusalem church in Acts 2.42 But the question remained, how could people be sure that they had received the "Baptism in the Holy Spirit?" The theme of "assurance" had long been central in the Wesleyan tradition. Now it seemed that a third step beckoned, beyond sanctification, whereby people could finally experience the absolute fullness of Christian life. But who could tell if it had actually happened?

This burning question was answered by another ex-Methodist preacher called Charles Fox Parham. In 1900 Parham had founded a "healing home" and a small Bible college Bible in Topeka, Kansas. In December of that year, Parham went on a fund-raising trip. He left his students with one assignment: to try and discern from the New Testament if there were any outward, invariable sign that guaranteed that a person had "received the Holy Spirit." After much study, the students concluded that there was indeed such a sign: the gift of tongues. When Parham returned, he heard the students' presentation and concluded that they were totally accurate. So in a watch-night service at the college on December 31, 1900 Miss Agnes Ozman spoke (as it was remembered) in Chinese, signifying that she had received "the Baptism in the Holy Spirit."

This moment in time marked the inauguration of the 20th century worldwide Pentecostal movement. Now there was an empirical, verifiable test, showing that a person had become a full and complete Christian. With tongues established as the criterion, of course other New Testament "gifts of the Spirit" (always present in 19th century revivals to one degree or another) proliferated as well. It also attracted attention. There was a student at Parham's Bible College, an African-American preacher named William Seymour. Parham treated Seymour abysmally, banning him from the classroom and requiring that he sit and listen, outside a window. Nevertheless Seymour imbibed Parham's teaching and began to preach it himself. Moving to California, he formed a small prayer meeting in Los Angeles in the spring of 1906, which began to feature astonishing "signs and wonders." Outgrowing the house, the group moved to a rented livery stable in Azusa Street. (The great earthquake on April 18th added a note of apocalyptic urgency to the prayer meetings there). By summertime, news of the Azusa Street revival had spread over the whole country, and seekers came to experience the restoration of New Testament Christianity. And they went away from Azusa Street preaching the new Pentecost to the whole world - for example to Chile where

207 Methodistic Pentecostals founded Jotabeche Church in Santiago that had 350,000 members 43 by the 1990s.

One more step would link the Pentecostal movement with Anglicanism in the 1960s. Pentecostals in the early 1900s were mostly from a Methodist background and familiar with the teaching about a second experience after conversion, a baptism of sanctification. So when Benjamin Irwin began preaching a "baptism in the Holy Spirit," Methodistic Pentecostals naturally identified this experience as a third baptism. However, there were converts early on from the Baptist tradition, who had believed that sanctification was implicitly conferred with the first baptism, of conversion. So when these Baptist folk heard about the "baptism in the Holy Spirit," they naturally thought of it as a second event. Much vigorous fellowship ensued, leading (inter alia) to the formation of the in Hot Springs, Arkansas in April of 1914.44 It was this latter branch of the worldwide Pentecostal movement that would carry the fire to an Episcopal clergyman named Dennis Bennett in 1960.

208 The Anglican Charismatic Tradition since 1960

Early Beginnings: the 1960s and the 1970s

The sixties and the seventies witnessed the birth and childhood of the charismatic movement in the Church . . . We explored the Pentecostal experience and discovered new spiritual gifts; we opened ourselves to praise centered worship and community relationships in a deepening awareness of 45 the Spirit's power.

Dennis Bennett is a name with worldwide recognition due to the publicity he received in editions of Time and Newsweek magazines. Bennett, rector of an Episcopal congregation in Van Nuys, California, was “baptized in the Spirit” in the late 50's along with another Episcopal colleague, Frank Maguire. A year later he shared his experience from the pulpit on Passion Sunday, 1960. Though Pentecostals in the mainline denominations had been quietly practicing their piety for some years previously, Bennett's announcement has come to be recognized as the beginning of the charismatic renewal, which has touched all of the historic denominations, Protestants, Roman Catholics and eventually, the Orthodox churches. Its effect was seen in what some called “a new Pentecost,” widespread renewal that included the adaption of some of the beliefs and practices common to Pentecostal 46 churches, like the recognition and use of spiritual gifts.

This renewal was not without cost, as illustrated by Bennett's case. Division within his congregation and the objections of his Bishop,47 led to his resignation as rector within a few weeks of his announcement. With the subsequent publicity, the whole incident served to take the experience of and the baptism of the Holy Spirit out of the closet. What was initially perceived to be folk religion (with questionable exegesis and psychological danger) slowly began to be normalized and in some ways authorized by the fact that it was being experienced among leaders in respected denominations.

Bennett moved to Seattle and helped revive a congregation there, eventually developing a flourishing ministry and becoming a major spokesperson for the charismatic renewal in the Episcopal church. Meanwhile, a couple affected by his ministry in California, Jean and Donald Stone, organized a charismatic fellowship for the promotion and dissemination of published material related to renewal, the Blessed Trinity Society. One of the original board members, , was a well-known Pentecostal and a member of the World Council of Churches. The society's quarterly magazine, Trinity, was particularly influential in the greater Anglican Communion during the period of its wide distribution from 1961 until 1966. The Stones also developed seminars aimed at the traditional churches

209 and attracted attendees from across the nation, influential leaders like Lutheran pastor Larry 48 Christenson and Episcopalian Graham Pulkingham.

Many of the traditional churches conducted psychological studies and issued cautionary and prohibiting reports, while the work of the Holy Spirit continued to grow, gradually expanding the charismatic movement by renewing the lives of individuals who were advised and strove to remain in their denomination.49 Within parishes influenced by the renewing power of the Holy Spirit, liturgical changes were minimal. Major services remaining unchanged but were marked by enlivened worship and optional healing prayer added to the Communion service. Prayer and praise meetings, generally placed in the Sunday or Wednesday evening slot, were means of assimilating charismatic values and allowing for the expression of spiritual gifts in the worship of congregations touched by renewal.

The tide of negativism towards the renewal within the traditional churches in the States began to change in the early 70's after publication of the favorable report of the American Roman Catholic Bishops meeting in November of 1969. Until this time, Protestant responses had expressed a general lack of ease with the charismatics among them, and suspicions of psychological imbalance persisted despite studies meant to dispel such impressions.50 The Catholic report recognized that on the part of critics, “the understanding of this movement is colored by emotionalism. . . and suspicion of unusual spiritual experiences,” but broadened their view of the issues reviewed and expressed openness, pointing to the fruit of spiritual growth, increased reading of Scripture, clearer understanding of the faith, and contributions to the ministries of the Church. This document was characterized by serious theological reflection and as such was a bellwether for the same in the decades to come. The openness expressed by the Catholic Bishops “helped create a new atmosphere," and their resolve to not prohibit the renewal, along with support of other leaders like Cardinal Joseph Suenens, led to uninhibited growth. Within two years, “ninety percent, of the American (Catholic) hierarchy were in favor of the charismatic renewal.” 51 Such growth across denominations reflected the ecumenical flavor of the renewal.

Episcopal Renewal Ministries

Growth within the Episcopal Church was accelerated when in 1973; a meeting in Dallas resolved to form a national service committee to help local priests and parishes, called the Episcopal Charismatic Fellowship. Its first coordinator, Terry Fullam, rector of a large parish involved in renewal,52 later changed the name to Episcopal Renewal Ministries to better reflect its founding principles and to avoid any sense of elitism. Their goal was to serve as a networking and educational organization within the church, supporting local clergy in the renewal of their parishes. This was accomplished though their monthly newsletter Acts 29, seminars, clergy and parish renewal weekends, and speakers for various venues. ERM

210 had great influence among the clergy with at least 400 of 7,000 parishes actively involved in renewal by 1984. This influence was also felt overseas, particularly among Anglican Bishops, 53 nearly 50% of whom openly promoted the charismatic renewal.

Anglican Charismatic Renewal in the UK

Isolated incidences of people receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues were already reported among Anglicans in the UK but imported copies of Trinity magazine acted as a catalyst as they passed from hand to hand, filled with teachings on subjects related to renewal and testimonies of what God was doing in America. The Rev. Michael Harper described an ever-increasing “extensive harvest in the churches of Britain, which accelerated when Dr. Phillip E. Hughes, a well respected theologian and editor of the evangelical Churchman magazine, endorsed the charismatic renewal. He had reported favorably on visits to Episcopalian meetings in California as a guest of Jean Stone. Consequently, trans-Atlantic visits from Frank Maguire in the spring of 1963 and Larry Christenson that summer generated much interest. Harper, then a curate at London's All Souls, Langham Place serving under John Stott, had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit at a meeting in 1962 but was greatly helped by both visitors to broaden his theological understanding of glossolalia and Spirit baptism.54 As renewal spread in Britain, All Souls initially served as a point of contact for those involved in the renewal. However, when John Stott publicly stated his belief that charismatic expressions for today were without Scriptural foundation, Harper resigned to start the Fountain Trust in1964 as an ecumenical engine for renewal networking and teaching in the UK, sponsoring conferences and publishing Renewal magazine. Many were blessed by its ministry of supporting charismatic renewal in the traditional churches until its voluntary dissolution in 1980.

Tensions between Evangelicals like Stott and Charismatics like Harper were one of the challenges to overcome in the course of renewal. Although each used Scripture to support their stance, controversies simmered over speaking in tongues and the use of the terms “baptism” or “infilling” or “releasing” the Holy Spirit. Each position claimed differing theological underpinnings that alienated ministers working towards the same goal of renewal. One of the more difficult issues concerned Holy Baptism. Did it apply the "finished work of Christ" to the live of the recipient, or did it need to be supplemented by a further experience (or experiences). Thoughtful questions related to these and other points causing tension among charismatic and non-charismatic evangelical Anglicans were addressed in 1976 by a joint statement entitled “Gospel and Spirit.” The participants were recognized leaders appointed by the Church of England Evangelical Council and the Fountain Trust, meeting for discussion to promote unity and understanding. On the matter of Baptism, they agreed that:

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the New Testament use of the words 'baptize' and especially 'baptize into' stresses their initiatory content and context, and therefore refers to Christian initiation, rather than to a later enrichment of Christian experience...We could all emphasize that it must not be employed in a way which would question the reality of the work of the Spirit in regeneration and the real difference that this brings in experience from the outset. On that we are unanimous.55

The group found ways to affirm each other's concerns on a number of other matters, including the use of tongues, the gift of prophecy, and healing. Although Evangelicals and Charismatics continued to emphasize different styles of worship and so on, this joint exercise helped lower the temperature of ongoing conversations between them. One example of Charismatic renewal's more comfortable place in the Church of England was the event organized by the Fountain Trust and others, preceding the in 1978. Of the 360 participants, most were clergy from overseas with 32 bishops among them. The closing service lasted over three hours with joyful evidence that the historic institutional Anglican Church had fully embraced the renewal of the Holy Spirit as Bishops danced around the high altar in Canterbury Cathedral.

The Third Wave

The Third Wave is a term first used by Peter Wagner, professor of Church Growth at Fuller Theological Seminary, to describe another move of the Holy Spirit simultaneous with the Charismatic Renewal of the 1980's and early 90's.56 This expression, also known as the Signs and Wonders movement, describes a period in the charismatic renewal during the early '90's when the teachings of Wagner and John Wimber at Fuller focused on the powerful effects of healing and prophecy in particular, when exercised as a dimension of mission and evangelism. In a course presented at Fuller Theological Seminary, Wagner and Wimber were recapitulating the ministry of St. Paul, who depended upon the Holy Spirit working in power through his preaching.

“My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might 57 rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.”

Although this was Paul's strategy in his missionary work, many Evangelicals objected or expressed concern that under such circumstances (as promoted by Wagner, Wimber), faith would be based upon experience or a form of New Age magic instead of the word of God spoken through the preaching of the Gospel. Still, the Third Wave appealed to some

212 Charismatics who held that the infilling of the Holy Spirit was a second experience apart from the regeneration of conversion and baptism. Wimber, who began as a cessationist, had come to believe the classic Pentecostal interpretation of the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a second blessing after conversion. But in his later years he modified that belief and taught that baptism of the Holy Spirit happened at conversion. However, he did concede that there might also be a subsequent manifestation of charisms at a later time. The world-wide Vineyard Fellowships adopted this doctrine.

Wimber's teaching exerted great influence within the Anglican Communion through his association with Anglican clergy like David Watson, Sandy Millar and David Pytches during his many visits to the UK for seminars and conferences. David Watson was another Anglican of great influence in the charismatic renewal who first connected with John Wimber in 1981 and bought him to England in 1984 for his initial visit. Watson was vicar of St. Michael le Belfry in York where he pioneered many of the forms still associated with a charismatic style of worship, like drama and use of the arts. Watson became a prolific author and speaker traveling throughout the UK and giving testimony to the work of the Holy Spirit especially among Anglicans. His writings reflected Wimber's Third Wave teaching related to the Holy Spirit.

The Toronto Blessing

The Toronto Airport Vineyard Church gave rise to a revival know as the Toronto Blessing in early1994, which has been one of the most controversial movements in the Charismatic renewal. The press and associated media helped promote the impression that it was primarily characterized by such manifestations as laughing, falling, shaking and crying, earning it criticism that the movement was merely strange or even demonic. Such manifestations and the controversies they caused led to the fellowship and its leader, John Arnott, being released by the parent organization, the Vinyard under John Wimber. It is now known as the Toronto Airport Church Fellowship (TACF). Not all were critical though, citing similar manifestations mentioned in the Bible, credible sources like the journals of Jonathan Edwards and records of other revival movements. If a tree is judged by its fruit, one must consider over 9,000 new converts, marriages healed, bodies restored and lives transformed by the preaching and teaching of God's word. There was also good measurable fruit in the area of mission, manifested in the ministries of those who participated like Heidi and Roland Baker, whose work with orphans in Mozambique is legendary. Recipients of the "Toronto Blessing" have planted over 10,000 churches, seen over a million conversions, and have expanded their work to include ten African countries. Over time, an estimated 55,000 churches have been affected by the "Blessing" as people visited Toronto and then returned to their home churches, many of which were Anglican or Episcopal, where similar renewal 58 ensued.

213 A Turn Toward Mission in the 1990s

Despite the signs and wonders that the Toronto movement exported, observers noted that the Charismatic revival as a whole was running out of pneuma in the late 1990s, in the UK and also in the United States. Writing about the early UK movement in 1980, J.I. Packer had argued that it was primarily an experiential phenomenon, affecting individuals and congregations. It did not seek to alter the theology or the institutional structures of the churches. Charismatic renewal, said Packer,

seeks first and foremost to realise oneness in Christ experientially...in relation to the creeds and confessions of their own churches, charismatics usually have nothing distinctive to say at all ... charismatics are loyal denominationalists who, taking as their starting-point what their church professes, devote their thoughts, prayers and efforts to revitalizing its 59 practice.

The revival phase of the Charismatic movement had not been without an emphasis on mission. One thinks of the SOMA (Sharing of Ministries Abroad) that grew out of the Lambeth events in 1978, and began to send teams all over the Anglican Communion to preach and teach about healing.60 But it seemed to some observers that the overall experiential focus of the revival was a weakness in the long term, inasmuch as it was effervescent but evanescent. Martin Percy argued, for example, that:

the charismatic renewal in the Church of England has been routinized over time.It has failed to transform the structures and displace the liberal hierarchies, so that by the time it has come of age and is ready to dialogue it 61 has lost its cutting edge.

Anecdotal evidence from the United States paints a similar picture: dwindling renewal conventions of septuagenarian Charismatics, raising their arms and wistfully singing the revival praise-songs of the 1970s.

However, there are signs that the Charismatic renewal produced three new movements in the 1990s that are (1) so far avoiding institutional sclerosis and (2) moving the Charismatic renewal from individual experience to evangelism and mission. These three are the New Wineskins Missionary Network in the US, the world-wide, and the Fresh Expressions church-planting movement, still mostly in the UK.

214 The New Wineskins Missionary Network

In 1994 veteran missionary trainers Walter and Louise Hannum wanted to arrange a conference to celebrate Walter's retirement. The couple had served in Alaska for many years, where Walter was vicar of Ft. Yukon, among several ministries. Later they had moved to Pasadena, CA and founded the Episcopal Church Missionary Community (ECMC) to promote training for future missionaries before they went on the field. The Hannums subsequently moved their office to Ambridge, PA so as to cooperate with Trinity School for Ministry in its missions program. With the help of Trinity, the Hannums planned a celebratory conference at Ridgecrest, NC for the spring of 1994.They called the conference "New Wineskins for Global Mission." To everyone's delight and astonishment, about a thousand people showed up. Plenary speakers came from all over the world, dozens of workshops featured training, and the worship was in full charismatic power. The success of this (originally one- off) conference convinced the Hannums and others to offer continuing conferences every three years. This event soon became essential in strengthening the orthodox remnant in the Episcopal Church, holding it together, and keeping its focus on mission. It continued to meet every three years (four on one occasion) with attendance always around a thousand. With the Ridgecrest conferences now its major ministry, the ECMC changed its name to the "New Wineskins Missionary Network." The gatherings continued to feature charismatic worship, and to offer speakers and workshops on topics of charismatic interest. For example, the conference in April, 2016 held workshops on "Mission, Miracles and the Holy Spirit," "Spiritual Warfare on the Mission Field," "Healed Hearts, Whole Witness: Healing is a 'Must' in Missions" and similar themes. In a season in which orthodox Anglicans in North America might have been tempted to self-pity, the New Wineskins meetings helped keep them focused outward, and expectant of the Holy Spirit's leading and empowering missions all over the world.

The Alpha Course

The Alpha Course has been the most effective program in the Anglican Communion over the last twenty-five years, for engaging, discipling and empowering new believers for service. It is a fruit of the collaborative ministry of John Wimber and Sandy Millar, then rector of Holy Trinity, Brompton (HTB) in London. An early form of Alpha was already in place at Holy Trinity in the early 1980s, as a means of teaching new members the basics of Christian faith and for the assimilation of new folks into the church. But after Wimber paid a number of visits to in the 80's and 90's, the course was revamped to include charismatic elements. (on staff at HTB) took over leadership of the Alpha Course in 1990, and under his guidance the course spread widely in the Anglican Communion and beyond. As of May, 2016 there have been 29 million people enrolled in the course in 169 countries, and the teaching materials have been translated into 112 different 62 languages.

215

The course features a clear evangelical presentation of the Gospel, with orthodox content and charismatic expressiveness, and is aimed at reaching the de-churched and unchurched, answering their questions and introducing them to individual renewal by the power of the Holy Spirit. Although initially used in England and coming from an Anglican Charismatic perspective, it is now well known and used internationally in many different denominations who insert supplemental classes to cover their own theological perspectives and important doctrines. One apparent weakness of the Alpha program has been an occasional difficulty in moving participants from the close table fellowship of the course itself, to participation in Sunday worship and the ordinary life of the congregation. "Church" sometimes seems weird, and the culture-gap has at times proved too wide to cross easily. This is the problem that the second new movement addresses.

Fresh Expressions

Fresh Expressions is a missional and church-planting movement, born out of the Church of England and inspired by the Charismatic renewal, which has gained a great deal of traction in the last fifteen years. As a mature expression of the revival, one which aims to change certain Anglican structures and practices (as well as those in other denominations) Fresh Expressions appears to be the most important current development of the Charismatic renewal, and deserves an extended look.

If the life-verse of the original Charismatic renewal might have been an abbreviated version of I Corinthians 14:5 ("I would like every one of you to speak in tongues...") an analogous epigraph for Fresh Expressions might be Acts 1:8, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." By the 1990s it was manifest that the Church of England needed to engage in mission, or die.

The 1990s saw the continuation of seismic changes in British society that had been underway for decades, but accelerated in that decade. Michael Moynagh speaks of an "ecclesial turn," an "ethical turn," and an "economic and social turn."63 The ecclesial turn entailed the marginalization of Christianity in Britain, due to the churches' failure to keep up with social changes. One consequence was the drop in average Sunday attendance (amongst all Christian groups) was down to 7.5% in 1998.64 Some of this alienation from "church" had to do with an ethical turn, says Moynagh - a moral shift in the culture away from "duty" ethics to "self-expression" ethics. The Romantic mantra "I gotta be me" appealed to modern people who live in an ever more regulated society, and who want to carve out "safe zones" of personal freedom in the area of their "lifestyle choices." Finally the economic and social turn involves decentralization, fragmentation (such as divorce and the decreasing size of households in Britain to 2.4 persons)65 and a consumer culture whose inevitable loneliness

216 became endemic amongst people from all walks of life. All these changes made the institutional "Come to Us" approach of the churches quite useless - opening the doors and hoping that people would come to worship. For the Church of England, it meant that the geographical parish no longer fit the lives of people who might live in one town, commute to work in a nearby city, and gather with friends (say, a regional soccer team or a book group) in yet another nearby area. At the same time, this fragmented society offered new opportunities for Christians to "Go to You" if they could develop new forms of fellowship and worship that fit the new environment...house churches, cafe churches, "messy church" and dozens more creative innovations.

Foreseeing the need for the Church of England to shift "from maintenance to mission," the flagship Charismatic congregation, Holy Trinity Brompton, held an invitation- only conference for church planters in 1987. Quickly this became an open and annual event, bringing many hundreds of people together to share and network. The 1991 meeting produced a book of conference papers called Planting New Churches, still a substantial and valuable reference by Anglican authors.66 Likewise in 1991 the Standing Committee created a working party on church planting, which published Breaking New Ground in 1994. This report noted (not before time) that the Church of England needed new congregations, and that its diocesan and parochial structures were sufficiently adaptable that bishops might permit new forms of "church" to spring up across parish boundaries. Nevertheless the report communicated a certain lack of ease with the whole idea of church planting, calling it a "supplementary strategy that enhances the essential thrust of the parish principle."67 However, events ran away far beyond this tentative beginning over the next ten years. Both in the Church of England and in the other Protestant groups, an "explosion of diversity" took place in which dozens of new experimental forms of "church" appeared in Britain. Faced with this runaway phenomenon, the Church of England appointed yet another working group to assess the scene and make recommendations. Chair of the group was the Rt. Rev. , and former vicar of the #2 English Charismatic parish, St. Michael-le-Belfry in York. Their report appeared as Mission-Shaped Church in 2003. It sold more than 30,000 copies. General enthusiastically approved it 68 and commended it for study in all the Church's dioceses.

Mission-Shaped Church argued that church planting was the essence of the Church, not merely an adjunct strategy that hoped eventually to move people back from house churches and cafe churches into the "real" geographical parish church. The report called for a "mixed economy" in the Church of England, retaining the parish churches where they were viable, but viewing "fresh expressions of church"69 as equally valid, and indeed the growing edge of the Church in Britain for the foreseeable future. The report asserted that all of this was faithful to the Anglican tradition, professing the historic, creedal Trinitarian faith of Anglicanism, consistent with waves of missionary church planting in the English past, fully

217 compatible with the structures and practices of the Church, and indeed vitally necessary if the Church of England were to fulfill its calling "to be a Church for the nation."70 Further stressing the consistency of "Fresh Expressions" with historic Anglicanism, the report emphasizes that:

...to be missionary, a church has to proclaim afresh the faith of the Scripture and the creeds. This is not a 'value' of the church, but the foundation upon 71 which the church is built.

Finally, Mission-Shaped Church offered a working model for the kinds of creative experiments that were proliferating. In addition to the historic marks (One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic), the "Fresh Expressions" fellowships ought to exhibit four directions or dimensions of life. There should be an "Up" dimension, focused on God in worship, without which Christians are merely "having charismatic caressed."There should be an "In" direction, exhibiting the fellowship of the Trinity shared by Christians through the Holy Spirit. There must likewise be an "Out" direction, without which the church "enters the realm of disobedience, ignoring the call of the missionary God." Finally there must be an "Of" dimension, in which the Church consciously celebrates its interdependence in and with the global Christian movement, the historic churches, and indeed the Church Triumphant. "Fresh Expressions" 72 of church are deliberately not schismatic, but wholly committed to the Body of Christ.

After publishing Mission-Shaped Church, members of the working group believed that an ongoing organization would usefully serve the church-planting movement. So in 2004 the Fresh Expressions (FxC) movement was born, drawing on contributions from the Methodist Church in the UK as well as other ecumenical partners who were committed to church planting. The Rev. Stephen Croft led the team for one five-year term (he later became ) and the Rt. Rev. Graham Cray succeeded him in 2009. In 2013 the Church Army's research unit in the UK surveyed the progress of the movement over the past ten years. The findings were startling. The report stated that:

(The) Church of England is in a significantly different position to where it found itself ten years earlier in 2003...One possible inference and way to put it is that the Church of England is now starting four to five FxC every 73 week.

Significantly, the new church plants - in all their myriad variety - were recruiting young people at a surprising rate. The report noted that:

(o)n average at the FxC, 41% of the attendees are under 16. This is significantly higher than in inherited church and is a promising beginning.74

218

Recognizing the rapid growth of the Fresh Expressions movement in the early 2000s, the first scholarly study of this wave of church planting appeared in 2012. Michael Moynagh, Church for Every Context: An Introduction to Theology and Practice is a thorough, well-researched and profound study of Fresh Expressions. Moynagh is a Church of England clergyman and scholar at Wycliffe Hall in Oxford. His study has become the standard assessment of Fresh Expressions.

Moynagh offers a critical restorationist view of Fresh Expressions. In Chapter 1 he surveys St. Paul's missionary strategies, as representing the Holy Spirit's work at the critical foundational period of the Church's new life. But Moynagh is cautionary about attempting to restore the Pauline paradigm in a wooden one-for-one fashion.

We must allow for differences between the New Testament and contemporary worlds, and we must avoid jumping from the New Testament 75 to now is if the church has done no reflection in between.

Nevertheless Paul's work shows that "church reproduction is intrinsic to the church's missional life,"76and in fact Paul's strategies involved a number of activities that Fresh Expressions has replicated in the 21st century. For example, Paul reversed the centripetal tendency of Jewish missions (expecting the Gentiles to "come to us") with a centrifugal approach ("go to you"). Paul deliberately identified with environments he sought to reach. He planted churches in the midst of everyday life - in the households that were the basic unit of urban life in the Roman Empire. He planted a "mixed economy" movement, strenuously maintaining connection with the original Jerusalem church of the Apostles, while moving out into the Gentile world and founding congregations whose life (e.g. their dining habits) looked very different from those of the mother church "back home." Paul used teams in his missionary work – in his later travels including as many as eight other evangelists with him - which for the most part supported themselves. And so on. All these activities (and many more) characterize the Fresh Expressions movement in the 21st century. Mission was central to Pauline Christianity. The present movement in the UK restores mission to the place that it occupied in New Testament times.

But was mission simply just one option, which Paul happened to choose? Not at all. Moynagh argues that mission is not simply a result of God's nature, but that mission is God's nature. Mission is self-giving, and self-giving is the nature of God's being. The eternal life of the Blessed Trinity is a ceaseless round of giving and receiving, in which each of the Persons focuses intently on the other two and offers eternal love. For example the Father eternally begets the Son, who reciprocates by His eternal obedience to the Father. The word means interpenetration and mutual self-giving in this sense. Mission is

219 as much an attribute of God as is love - indeed it is the expression of love. So mission is 77 grounded in the being of God. Indeed, it is the being of God.

What consequences ensue, if the church emulates Paul in recognizing that its very being is the missio dei, the eternal self-giving of the Triune God? First of all, mission will never be an adjunct, an add-on, or a second step, after worship (as is sometimes supposed). Secondly, recognizing that the Holy Spirit has been moving outward into the universe since creation, the church will acknowledge that it is always following the Spirit.78 Since the Holy Spirit is already working in the world (not merely in the church) missionaries will always pay attention to context, anticipating that the Spirit is already paving the way in mission. And in a particularly telling assertion Moynagh argues,

The church will not expect, therefore, to draw individuals from a culture outside God into an ecclesial culture within God. It will seek to form new Christian communities in which the Spirit's work in the context is fused 79 with the Spirit's work in the church.

The church in mission has to renounce the temptation to impose its own culture on a missionary context. This means that the church has to die, in order to live. Moynagh quotes with approval the dictum of Mission-Shaped Church, ten years before;

If it is the nature of God's love to undertake such sacrifice, it must also be the nature of his Church. The Church is most true to itself when it gives itself up, in current cultural form, to be re-formed among those who do not 80 know God's Son. In each new context the church must die to live.'

But what about the Church's cherished traditions and practices? Moynagh argues that they are always secondary to our life in the Triune God, and our relationships with each other, and with those who come to know God through the Spirit's (and the church's) mission. Relationship is essential, the esse of the church. What Moynagh calls "practices" are for the bene esse of the church. Moynagh repeats the four "directions" of the model in Mission-Shaped Church, "Up, Of, In and Out," with the whole of the diamond-shaped icon moving together in the direction of "Out." These relations echo and incarnate the life of the Triune God. They are primary. Practices are secondary, for the good of the relationships. Moynagh lists certain practices that are "expected by virtually the entire church,” namely

word, sacraments and prayer in the Godward relationships; care for those in need and evangelism in relationships with the world; regular meetings and some form of church discipline in the gathering's relationships; use of these practices in the context of relationships to the

220 whole church - word, sacraments and prayer draw on the tradition, for 81 instance.

Because practices serve the church's relationships, they may vary according to time and place and the requirements of the missionary context. And the church is not to be defined by them. For one thing, on most matters beyond the basic creedal affirmations, the worldwide church has not been able to agree on much.

At best, the church has been able to agree what lies outside the bounds of acceptable belief and practice, but even these boundaries, as the ordination of women illustrates, have not been immutable. Church is more a debate than 82 an agreement about practices.

Moynagh's assignment of word and sacrament to the category of "practices" should probably be read in the context of Mission-Shaped Church's staunch affirmation that

to be missionary a church has to proclaim afresh the faith of the Scriptures and the creeds. This is not a 'value' of the church, but the foundation upon 83 which the church is built.

Yet Moynagh's bold assertion about practices remains a challenge: Relationships first, practices (including word and sacrament) second; Dying to live; Trusting the Holy Spirit. This is a distinctive "Charismatic" ecclesiology, challenging doctrines of the Church in the older Evangelical and Anglo- Catholic strands of Anglicanism.

The Rt. Rev. Graham Cray summed up both the hope and the challenge of Fresh Expressions, as he retired from his term as team leader in 2014.

The journey from that Mission-Shaped Church working party to Fresh Expressions 2014 is extraordinary. Who could have imagined that we'd be looking at 2,000 fresh expressions of church in both the Methodist Church and the Church of England ... Nationally and internationally, we have caught a wave of the Spirit. We have been allowed to share in a charism - a multifaceted gift of the Spirit...the God of surprises still leads the Church. Stay open to the future which God has prepared, but which he reveals only step by step.84

221 The Church in the Anglican Charismatic Tradition

From the early roots of the Charismatic tradition in the 18th century Wesleyan movement to Fresh Expressions in the present, certain ideas about the Church have recurred. The "revival" phase from the 1960s to the 1990s marked a brief exception, inasmuch as "signs and wonders" captivated attention and charismatics tended to accept the inherited forms of their churches, and hoped to fill them with renewed conviction and power.85 The Wesleyan Revival and the Fresh Expressions movement did entail new thoughts about the nature of the Church. The similarities were not exact, for example because the former movement occurred amidst 18th century Enlightenment individualism, while the latter grew up in the context of post-postmodern emphasis on relationships. However, the following themes seem consistent over the past (nearly) three hundred years.

(1) Mission. Both movements grew up in periods of ecclesiastical decline and institutional sclerosis. Wesley responded to the text of his first open-air sermon ("The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor") and founded a movement to carry the Gospel beyond the parish churches and into the cities of the early Industrial Revolution in England. Fresh Expressions likewise intends to help the Church of England move from a failing "Come to Us" strategy to a generous "Go to You" understanding of the Church's call.

(2) Restoration. Both movements exhibit a sense of the Church's decline, and the desirability of returning to certain features and practices of New Testament Christianity. Most important, Christians need to recover the missionary zeal of Apostolic Christianity, and the power of the Holy Spirit that fueled this outreach.

(3) Flexibility. Both movements evince a determination to put mission first in priority, and to adapt inherited traditions if the mission so requires. Wesley famously took upon himself to consecrate a bishop and to lay hands on presbyters for the work in America. Michael Moynagh insists that historic "practices" are secondary to the relationships of self- giving that are central to the work of missions.

(4) The Nature of God. Wesley recovered the Biblical truth that God is a missionary deity, with a plan to bring the nations into the light and to unite Jew and Gentile in a single body. Fresh Expressions carries this insight farther, in the light of 20th century Trinitarian theology. The very essence of God is the perichoretic self-giving amongst the Three Persons. Therefore the inherited practices of the Church must serve the missio dei, and not inhibit it by claiming first-order importance.

222 (5) The Holy Spirit. Both movements depend directly on the Holy Spirit, not merely for the empowerment of individual missionaries, but also for preparing the way in the hearts of those who will hear the Good News.

223 Endnotes

1 N.T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God I (Fortress Press, 2013), 369. 2 Gordon Fee, Paul, the Spirit and the People of God (Baker Academic, 1996), 7. 3 Ben Witherington III, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Eerdmans, 1995), 259. 4 Ephesians 4:11. See also Anthony C. Thisleton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Eerdmans, 2000), 1013-1015. 5 Michael Green, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, revised edition (Eerdmans, 2004), 128. 6 I Thessalonians 4:13-18. 7 See for example Margaret Y. MacDonald, The Pauline Churches (Cambridge University Press), passim; and Alistair C. Stewart, The Original Bishops: Office and Order in the First Christian Communities (Baker Academic, 2014), especially Chapter 3. 8 W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Fortress Press, 1984), 207. 9 Quoted in Cyril C. Richardson, Early Christian Fathers (Macmillan, 1978), 372. 10 Frend, 253-256 for this paragraph and the following; see also Rex D. Butler, The New Prophecy and the 'New Visions: Evidence of Montanism in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas (BorderStone Press, n.d.), passim. 11 See for example John Wesley's positive evaluation of Montanus: Howard Snyder, The Radical Wesley (Francis Asbury Press, 1980), 81. According to Wesley, Montanus had been "one of the best men then upon earth." 12 Frend, 421-423 and passim for this paragraph. 13 Benedicta Ward in John Chryssavgis, In the Heart of the Desert: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (World Wisdom, 2003), xiv. 14 Frend, 423. 15 Alan Kreider, 'Changing Patterns of Conversion in the West," in Alan Kreider, editor, The Origins of Christendom in the West (T & T Clark, 2001), 3-46. 16 St. Augustine, City of God, Henry Bettenson, translator (Penguin Books, 1984), 906 ff. 17 Ibid., 1033. 18 For this paragraph see Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (Oxford Universsity Press, 1972), in toto. 19 See K.B. McFarlane, Wycliffe and English Non-Conformity (Penguin Books, 1972), chapter 5; and A.G. Dickens, The English Reformation, second edition (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), chapter 3. 20 See especially Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (The University of California Press, 1967), Part Eight, chapters 4 and 5. 21 For the classic statement of this shift, see William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (Harper Torchbooks, 1957). For England's sense of divine election, see Haller, Foxe's Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (Jonathan Cape, 1963). 22 For all this, see the magisterial works of Christopher Hill, especially his The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (penguin Books, 1984). 23 For a readable summary of Wesley's early life and ministry, see Stephen Tomkins, John Wesley: A Biography (Eerdmans, 2003), chapters 1-9. 24 Quoted in Snyder, 95.

224 25 See e.g. Elisabeth Joy, editor, The Journal of John Wesley: A Selection (Oxford University Press, 1987), 57: "I rode once more to Pensford...But I had no sooner begun, than a great company of rabble, hired (as we afterward found) for that purpose, came furiously upon us, bringing a bull..." 26 See for example Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition (Eerdmans, 1997), 6-8. 27 See Paul Wesley Chilcote, John Wesley and the Women Preachers of Early Methodism (The American Theological Library Association and The Scarecrow Press, 1991), chapter 5. 28 Quoted in Snyder, 33. 29 Ibid., 81 30 David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (Unwin Hyman, 1989), 34-36. 31 Ibid., 36-50. 32 Ibid., 60-63. 33 Synan, 6-9. 34 Quoted in Tomkins, 79. 35 See for example Snyder, 92-94. 36 Quoted in ibid., 100. 37 Quoted in ibid., 99. 38 For a summary of this development see Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Hendrickson, 1987), chapter 2. 39 Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990 (Rutgers University Press, 1992), chapter 3. 40 The classic narrative of these developments is still Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People Volume I (Doubleday Image, 1975), chapters 26-38, 41 Synan, 49. 42 Ibid., chapter 3. 43 For the story of the movement from Topeka to Azusa Street in Los Angeles, see Synan, chapter 5. 44 Ibid., 155 45 John Thomas Arthur Gunstone, Pentecostal Anglicans (Hodder & Stoughton, 1982), 27. 46 Synan, 226-233. See also Bennett's personal testimony in his Nine O'Clock in the Morning (, 1970). 47 The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles published a report stating (inter alia) that the "Whitsunday" phenomenon (abnormal physical and psychological phenomena) could be compared to a scaffolding surrounding a new edifice. Once the edifice had been completed, the scaffolding became unnecessary and was discarded...With her growth and maturity the Church Wisely discarded the marks of infancy (glossolalia)" from Killian McDonnell, Charismatic Renewal and the Churches (Seabury, 10976), 43. 48 Rex Davis, Locusts and Wild Honey: The Charismatic Renewal and the Ecumenical Movement (World Council of Churches, 1978), 27. 49 Ibid., 41-78. 50 Ibid., 50. 51 For all this paragraph see Ibid., 50-52. 52 For Fullam's story see Bob Slosser, Miracle in Darien (Logos, 1979). 53 Synan, 292. 54 Michael Harper, At the Beginning (Hodder & Stoughton, 1974), 54ff. 55 Gospel and Spirit, churchsociety.org/docs/.../091/Cman_091_2_Baker.pdf, 105.

225 56 C. Peter Wagner, The Third Wave (Servant, 1988). The First Wave was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Azusa Street in 1906 that birthed the classical worldwide Pentecostal movement. The Second Wave represented the Charismatic renewal in the mainline Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960s. 57 I Corinthians 2:1-5. See also Romans 15:18-20. 58 See "The Enduring Revival," Christianity Today, March 7, 2014. 59 J.I. Packer, "Theological Reflections on the Charismatic Movement - Part I," The Churchman 94/1 (1980), 1-2. 60 somausa.org/about/history (accessed 5/21/16). 61 Mark J. Cartledge is summarizing Percy's argument: Cartledge, "A New Via Media: Charismatics and the Church of England in the Twenty-First Century, Anvil 17/4 (2000), 273 footnote 16. 62 alpha.org/getintouch/our story (accessed 5/21/16). 63 Michael Moynagh with Philip Harrold, Church for Every Context (SCM Press, 2012), chapter 4. Moynagh's book is the first major scholarly study of the Fresh Expressions movement, and is impressive in every way. 64 Ibid., 55. The figure had dropped further to 6.3% in 2005. 65 Archbishop's Council on Mission and Public Affairs, Mission-Shaped Church, second edition (Seabury, 2009), 1. 66 et al., Planting New Churches (Eagle, 1991). 67 Quoted in Mission-Shaped Church,18. 68 Ibid., vii. 69 The title of Chapter 4: see page 43 ff. 70 Ibid., 34-36, 99-102. This is the place to note the differences between "Fresh Expressions" and two other phenomena (1) the radically restorationist house church movement of the 1970s and 1980s, described by Andrew Walker, Restoring the Kingdom (Eagle, 1998), which rejected all historic institutional structures and (2) the "Emergent Church" movement which does the same, and likewise sits very loose to Christian creedal orthodoxy. 71 Mission-Shaped Church, 81. 72 For this paragraph see Ibid., 99. 73 Church Army Research Unit, Church Research Growth Project: Report on Strand 3b (Durham, 2013), 30. 74 Ibid., 45. 75 Michael Moynagh, Church for Every Context: An Introduction to Theology and Practice (SCM, 2012), 3. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid., 120-132. This brief summary does no justice to the depth and complexity of Moynagh's exposition. 78 As Graham Cray put it, "I'm going to give you the key to this movement in four words...Obey the Holy Spirit."Quoted in Travis Collins, From the Steeple to the Street: Innovating Mission and Ministry Through Fresh Expressions of Church (Seedbed, 2016), 96. 79 Moynagh, 132-133. 80 Quoted in Ibid., 186. 81 Ibid., 109. 82 Ibid., 113. 83 Mission-Shaped Church, 81. 84 freshexpressions.org.uk, April 22, 2014, Graham Cray, "Fresh Expressions: The Continuing Journey." 85 J.I. Packer, "Theological Reflections on the Charismatic Movement - Part I," The Churchman 94/1 (1980), 1-2.

226

Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology

A Comparative Timeline

The purpose of this timeline is not to present a complete detailed view of history, but rather to allow perspective on the different ways of understanding Anglican Ecclesiology. It is designed to show events important to the development of each particular perspective in the context of those historical events which have influenced them all.

227

Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology 0 – 500

Montanist movement Rise of Early Monasticism (~ 170) in Egypt (~270)

Apostolic Letters begin Ignatius of Antioch Irenaeus of Lyon Council of Nicea 1st Council of Council of Leo 1 (440-461) to be written (~50’s) (~105 –115) (~ 190) 325 Constantinople 381 Ephesus 431 Petrine Theory

Pentecost Clement of Rome Montanism rejected Edict of Milan Damasus 1 NT Canon is Council of (~30’s) (~ 96) (~ 190) 313 (366-384) closed (390’s) Chalcedon 451

* * * * * * 0 100 200 300 400 500

.

Each perspective finds its roots in this earliest period of the church, but each takes a different approach when determining the identified standard of authority for the Church’s development.

The High Church Position takes the perspective that, Christ instituted the ministry of the twelve and the seventy to hold authority over his people in keeping his teaching and proclaiming the Gospel. This was based on Scripture, which before any of the or letters were written, would have been the Hebrew Scriptures and as the Apostles presented their inspired writings, these were added as sources of authority. This authority was preserved and passed on by the Church through those who followed in Apostolic succession as the church continued to grow.

The Evangelical perspective sees the early apostles looking to leadership models found in the collegial structure of the Jewish synagogues which were familiar to them. The elders who developed the Church used authority structure that were familiar and productive, but did not represent the core of the identity of the Church. They could be adapted and changed to suit new situations. The apostolic succession, for them, is the succession of inspired teaching and accounts of the earliest experiences of the Church as it grew that would become the New Testament.

Charismatics feel that the early years of the Church were not derivative from what had come before, but instead represented a new thing, open to change as the Holy Spirit revealed it to them. For them, St. Paul understood his early churches to be the central symbol of the New Creation, of the coming kingdom of Christ projected forward into the first century. The core of the Church then is the spirit inspired writings of the apostles in the New Testament and the indwelling Holy Spirit in the Christian believer. The more the Church concentrated on structure and authority, the further from its original model it became. They see a constant need for fresh expressions of the Holy Spirit’s message, and active ministry by all believers as the true form of the Church.

228

Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology 500 – 1000 AD

Augustine 1st Archbishop Charlemagne of Canterbury 597 (778-814) 2nd Council of 3rd Council of 2nd Council of Constantinople 553 Constantinople 680 Nicea 787

* * * * * * 500 600 700 800 900 1000

.

As the life of the Church continues, the difference of the three perspectives becomes more pronounced.

Some see this period, with its development of the creeds and the Councils, represents a strong source for our present structures and purpose as the Church today.

Others would applaud the accomplishments, but be very cautious as seeing the structures of this time as something the church should emulate. They would point to the writings of men like Cyprian of Carthage, who maintained that the entire corps of bishops exercised collectively the powers that Our Lord gave to Peter. They would object to the developing "Petrine Theory" that all the Roman successors of St. Peter legally inherited the full range of the latter's powers. Anglican Evangelicals stress that the People of God (universal, regional and local) comprises all Christians together, with a strong tendency to resist either clericalism or any notion of ontological difference amongst the members

Charismatic objections are even stronger. Christian communities began to assume a more institutional structure. Very early leadership, represented by Clement of Rome had assumed a collegial presbyterate. This led to a clearly articulated ministry of bishops, presbyters and deacons in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch in the early second century. But this was not necessarily seen by the body of believers as either healthy or true to the legacy of Jesus. The rise of early monasticism in Egypt in the 270s also represented a restorationist movement Anglican Charismatic revival stands foursquare in this tradition that has yearned to revive the Spirit -filled power of the early Pauline communities

229

Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology 1000 – 1300 AD

Stephen Langton (1207-1228) Archbishop of Canterbury

Peoples Crusade Waldensians 1090 (1176-1198)

Sectarians of the “Free Spirit” Joachim of Fiore in Paris (~12th cent) 1190

William the Conqueror Thomas Becket (1162-1170) Pope Innocent III (1066 – 1087) Archbishop of Canterbury (1198-1216)

Great Schism Gregory VI King John 4th Lateran Council William of Ockham 1054 (1073-1085) (1199-1216) 1215 (1288-1347)

* * . * * . * * * 1000 1050 1100 1150 1200 1250 1300

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All three positions would recognize the unfortunate excesses that began to develop in the structure of the Church after the split between East and West.

The positives could still be seen to outweigh the negatives. The fact that that the Church was a visible and organized society, inextricably linked and grounded in the ministry of the Apostles, gave strength to the Church in a difficult era. It insured its security and unique identity in a time of political turbulence, pestilence and change.

Evangelicals would point out that by establishing that the Church was to be governed by a hierarchy of clergy and that the priesthood differed ontologically from the laity in their authority to pronounce the words of consecration, the Church had become an empire, rather than a people and was in danger of losing her true identity. This is evident in an English context as we see the struggle, between Pope Innocent III and King John, over who would be the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Charismatics are even stronger in their objections and point to the continual eruption of movements of the spirit and the more controlled manifestation of the rise of monasticism as testimony of the objections of the individual Christian’s yearning for a more unstructured and less oppressive character for the Church.

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Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology 1300 – 1400 AD

John Wyclif (1324-1384)

Spiritual Franciscans Lollards (1309-1331) (1382-1500’s)

1302 Unam Sanctum, 1324 Defensor Pacis Papal Schism Pope Boniface VIII Marsiglio of Padua (1378-1415) Papacy in Avignon 1343 Unigenitus, Peasants’ Revolt (1309-1377) Pope Clement VI 1381 * * * * * . * 1300 1320 1340 1360 1380 1400

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The struggle for power, within the structure of the church had reached a tipping point. This period represents some of the most egregious claims for power on the part of the leaders of the Church, both politically and in the spiritual burdens it placed on the people.

The Avignon Papacy and the subsequent Great Schism both encouraged the critics of the Roman primacy and the institutional Church. Looking for a simpler understanding of their true identity as Christians, they turned to the reliable source of Scripture. Men like Wyclif began to question how far the Church had strayed from its roots and taught others to look back to the reliable witness of Scripture.

With the rise of groups like the Lollards, Charasmatics see a pattern which has been repeated since the Montanists: charismatic manifestations common to Spirit led renewal movements are viewed as heretical by the institutional church which leads to either vigorous persecution leading to extinction or absorption by the institution.

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Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology 1400 – 1500 AD

1476 William Caxton brings printing to England

1401 De Heretico Comburendo 1493 Europe becomes aware of the New World

Consiliar Movement (1409 – 1449) King Henry VII (1485-1509) * . * * * * . * 1400 1420 1440 1460 1480 1500

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The challenge to the established structure and authority of the church led in two distinct directions. A great effort was mad e to prevent the instigation of change from the bottom up, by suppressing the possibility of a more biblically aware laity. An effort was made to change the present structure with the Consiliar movement. Both were only temporary measures. With the arrival of printing making Scripture more widely available and the expansion of the world changing many ideas of what was possible, change was inevitable.

232

Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology 1500 – 1550 AD

1549 1st Book of Common Prayer (Latin)

William Tyndale (1494-1536) Anabaptists in Germany and 1550 BCP and Ordinal the Low Countries (~1520’s) first published in English

1533Act in Restraint of Appeals 1534 Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity Anne Boleyn becomes pregnant 1536 The Ten Articles Act Clement VII refuses to annul 1533 1547 The Image of Both Churches. Thomas Cranmer appointed by Henry VIII John Bale (1495-1563) Archbishop of Canterbury (1533-1555)

Henry VIII Thomas Cromwell Edward VI (1509-1547) Chief Minister (1532-1540) (1547-1553) * * * * * . * 1500 1510 1520 1530 1540 1550

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The Reformation reached England in a dramatic way because it became part of English life through change from individuals who were affected by Scripture and the theology of the Reformation, and the fact that it became a political part of the English identity when Henry VIII severed the Church of England from the Bishop of Rome.

From its beginning, the Anglican Church has sought to retain the best of both worlds. It tried to combine the best of the structures and teaching from the Early Church with the biblically-centered theology of the Reformers. Therefore, throughout its history there have been those in the life of the Church who have favored one of these sources over the other.

Along with these two main themes, there is a constant counterpoint of charismatic movements, most of which had no major theological impact on the life of the church until the 19th century.

233

Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology 1550 – 1600 AD

Black Rubric added (John Knox) 1552 2nd BCP/Ordinal 1552 John Whitgift (1583-1604)

Puritan movement begins in England (1560 -1660’s) Puritans driven out of Church Leadership1590

Elizabeth I 1563 39 Articles, in Latin, affirmed by Convocation 1597 The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1558-1603) Book of Martyrs, John Foxe (Book VI)

1564 Apology of the Church 1594 The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity of England, John Jewel (Books I-IV) Richard Hooker (1554-1600)

Mary I 3rd BCP/Ordinal 1571 39 Articles, in English, 1584 England gains a foothold (1553-1558) 1559 affirmed by Parliament in the New World (Sir Walter Raleigh)

* . * * . * . * * 1550 1560 1570 1580 1590 1600

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One of the first places where this division can be seen is in the new Book of Common Prayer, first in Latin, expressing its roots in what had come before, then in English reflecting more of the philosophy of the Reformers. As the political fate of England swept its people to and fro’ between Roman and Protestant thought, the motivating goal was national unity. When the long and stable reign of Elizabeth began, there was also the luxury of reflecting on the nature of the English Church and many classic works on the Anglican faith, notably Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, were produced in this period. This period also marks the more detailed development of two vies of ordained ministry

One position holds the authority of the ministry is received from Christ. As John (and Cranmer) indicate, this is dependent on a particular gift of the Holy Spirit. This gift is understood as imparting the spiritual authority of the ministry of the priestly office or as the ‘character’ of the ordained ministry, given with the laying on of hands. This spiritual ‘character,’ however, is paralleled by the ecclesial authority to preach and administer the sacraments, symbolized by giving a Bible to the ordinand.

In contrast to the "sacerdotal" understanding of the clergy's role in the late medieval Church, the Reformers understood their ordained leaders to be "ministers of word and sacrament," with a particular emphasis upon the parish as the specific venue for the celebration of both. The 16th century Church of England increasingly promoted a piety that was "verbal" more than "visual," with the word "verbal" understood to include both hearing and reading the Word of God.

234

Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology 1600 – 1650 AD

Lancelot Andrewes 1606 Overall’s Convocation Book William Laud Archbishop Bishop (1605-1626) (1603Convocation) of Canterbury (1633-1645)

Authorized Version 1607 Jamestown –England’s first permanent 1649 Charles I beheaded Commissioned 1604 settlement with first Anglican worship Cromwellian Interregnum (1649-1660)

1620 Plymouth –English Puritans found1648 1648 The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, colony for religious freedom (Books VI-VIII) published posthumously

James I (IV) 1611 Authorized Version Charles I English Civil War (1603-1625) completed (1625-1649) (1642-1649) * * * * * * 1600 1610 1620 1630 1640 1650

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During this period there was an increase in frequency and influence of those who represented a more high church perspective. These Caroline Divines even achieved royal influence in their favor. Reaction to this, and a fear of a repeat of an earlier return to Roman Catholicism under Mary, as well as other political motivations, led to the English Civil War.

This period is also of note because it begins the movement of the Anglican Church, tied to a particular people and culture, into other parts of the world.

235

Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology 1650 – 1700 AD

1687 Principia Mathematica Isaac Newton

Cromwellian Interregnum Restoration of Charles II Nonjuring Schism 1688 continues (1649-1660) (1660-1685) Glorious Revolution (1688-1689)

Richard Cromwell Cavalier Parliament (1661-1679) Lord Protector (1658-1659) Clarendon Code (1661-1665) Corporation Act

Oliver Cromwell made 4th BCP/Ordinal (1662) 1672 Test Act James II (VII) William and Mary(1689-1694{1702}) Lord Protector (1653-1658) (1685-1688) 1689 Toleration Act * * * * * * 1650 1660 1670 1680 1690 1700

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The joyless protestant regime under Cromwell made people more tolerant of the catholic aspects of the Anglican faith. With the monarchy restored under Charles II, the Caroline divines continued to have influence. When the Prayer Book was revised again in 1662, this influence was felt and several subtle, but significant changes were made. The 1662 prayer book would remain the standard for the common life of Anglican worship as the Church of England spread across the world.

Latitudinarian theology begins and remains popular until the 18th century. This will have a major effect on the American Episcopal Church.

Ironically, the intolerance of Cromwell for all things Catholic allowed a wider variety of protestant expressions to become a part of English life. During the Interregnum, toleration for more sects allowed group like Ranters, Diggers, Quakers, and Sweet Singers of Israel to become a part of the English life and travel into the New World as well.

236

Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology 1700 – 1750 AD

Regale and Pontificate, Unbloody Sacrifice, Summary Review Leslie1713 1714 Johnson Waterland 1737

Bangorian Controversy 1717

John Wesley’s ‘Aldergate’ experience (1738)

George I George II Great Awakening in colonial America (1730’s-1740’s) (1714-1727) (1727-1760) Evangelical Revival (1735-1833) UK

Anne Convocation suspended 1729 Wesleys organize (1702-1714) until 1852 (1717) their ‘Holy Club ‘

George Whitefield’s Whitefield preaches in ‘conversion’ 1735 colonial America 1737 * * * * . * * 1700 1710 1720 1730 1740 1750

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This period sees an expansion of Christian life and faith, establishing a firm presence and identity for Anglican influence in America.

John Hoadly, newly made , preached on, The Nature of the Kingdom or the Church of Christ, inflaming the controversy with the non-jurors over the relationship between Church and State

Wesley’s experience leads him to promote travelling lay and ordained preachers. These were not declared as non-Anglican until 1787 and Wesley himself remained Anglican until his death.

237

Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology 1750 – 1800 AD

(~1780’s) Hannah More, evangelical moralist (1745-1833)

1799 Church Missionary Society founded by Charles Simeon

1762 Devereux Jarrett ordained William Wilberforce elected to 1794 Evidences of Christianity, (1733-1801) priest Parliament (1780-1853) William Paley

1784 Wesley sends Thomas Coke to US. 2nd Great Awakening (US) Methodist Movement begins (1790-1840)

Samuel Seabury (1729 – 1796) 1795 French Constitution ratified, ordained first American Bishop (1784) end of French Revolution

1779 Amazing Grace 1786 Canterbury agrees to ordain John Newton (1725-1807) future American Bishops

George III 1775 Lexington and Concord 1789 1st American BCP (1760-1820) American Revolution (1775-1781) 1789 Storming of the Bastille, French Revolution begins * * . * * . * . . * 1750 1760 1770 1780 1790 1800

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This period begins a huge change in philosophy and thought. The inevitability of monarchy is called into question with the American and French Revolutions, Man and the understanding of his spiritual nature and relationship to the world began to be called into question as well. Evangelical behavior and morality was taking a dominant role in culture, but was beginning to weaken as a theological force in the Church.

As the American Episcopal Church begins, questions of structure and authority arise. The connection of the essence of the new structure to the old is maintained when Canterbury agrees to ordain the new Bishops necessary for the American Church.

238

Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology 1800 – 1850 AD

Jones of Nayland dies 1812 Calvinist Controversy (early 1800’s) 1833 Oxford Movement begins 1845 John Neuman’s (1726-1800) addressed by publication of Tracts for Our Times secession

1816 John Henry Hobart (1775-1830), 1838 Treatise on the Church Gorham Judgment Bishop of New York, of Christ, William Palmer 1850 leader of Old High Church Movement

1830 Principles of Geology, John Bird Sumner, evangelical, Charles Lyell Archbishop of Canterbury (1848-1862)

1815 Henry Ryder (1777-1836) 1832 Charles Petit McIlvaine, Bishop of Ohio (1852-1873) Ordained (wrote a noted rebuttal of the Oxford Movement)

1801 Camp Meetings at 1820 Spiritual Renewal movement Lane Ridge Kentucky led by Charles Finney US

1804 Napoleon becomes Emperor of France 1828 Test and Corporation Acts 1846 Leben Jesu, D. F. Straus 1804 Presiding Bishop Wm White compiles abolished translated into English common seminary syllabus for US

1811Alexander Viets Griswold made bishop Roman Catholic emancipation 1845 Thomas Newell Buxton, abolitionist (Presiding Bishop 1836-1843) 1829 (UK) and MP (1818- 1845) dies

George IV William IV 1839 Cambridge Camden (1820-1830) (1830-1837) Society founded * * * * . * . * 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850

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The 19th Century was a productive and exciting time for all three perspectives in the life of the church. Because of the increased influence of the Evangelical movement on Society, more Bishops were being made, representing that position. At the same time, the heavily biblical nature of their view of the world was coming into conflict with the new advancements in Science and Philosophy. The spiritual renewal of the early 19th century was soon accompanied by a new resurgence of the perspective in the church that looked back to the undivided church of the first centuries for a point of reference for the Church in these difficult modern times.

Anglo-Catholicism is coined as a term to describe the changes in US and UK worship begun by the Tractarian Movement. In 1850, St Barnabas Pimlico is recognized as the first ‘ritualist’ church

In addition to the Mines Act, evangelically influenced politician, Anthony Ashley Cooper (MP 1826-1845) also spearheaded the Ten Hour Act, all designed to influence society.

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Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology 1850 – 1900 AD

1859 , priest (1841-1866) E. B.Pusey dies (1800-1882) Saepius Officio, Fredrick Temple 1897 founds the Society of St Margaret Apostolica Curae Pope Leo XIII 1896

1876Ritualist prosecutions begin 1889 Prosecution of Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln under the new 1874 Act last of the ‘ritualist’ prosecutions

1859 Origin of the Species, John Charles Ryle evangelical Charles Darwin Bishop of Liverpool (1880-1900)

English Church Union 1873 George Cummins, Bishop of Kentucky 1858 founds the Reformed Episcopal Church

3rd Great Awakening US (1850-1900) 1900 Charles Fox Parham, tongues as a sure sign of the Holy Spirit, founding of Pentecostalism

Keswick Holiness Conventions 1890 Benjamin Irwin begins Founded 1875 preaching on the 3rd baptism

Charles Thomas Longley, Archbishop 1878 2nd Lambeth Conference 1889 Lux Mundi, of Canterbury (1862-1868) (Archbishop Tait) edited by Charles Gore

American Civil War 1888 3rd Lambeth Conference (Archbishop Benson) 1897 4th Lambeth Conference (1861-1865) 1874 Public Worship Regulation Act discusses doctrinal basis for unity Archbishop Temple

Convocation restored (UK) 1867 1st Lambeth Conference 1886 General Convention approves a 4 point 1892 2nd BCP (US) 1852 (Archbishop Longley) statement as a basis for ecumenical unity * * * . . * * 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900

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With Anglo-Catholicism comes the revival of the early church understanding of deaconesses. The Society of St Margaret by Neale (1859) in the UK and the setting apart of two deaconesses by the Bishop of Maryland in 1855 are early examples. General Convention quickly adds a definition of deaconesses and their functions to their canons and Lambeth Conference also approves the revival of deaconesses.

The popularity of the Anglo-Catholic movement leads evangelicals, now in positions of political influence begin to use the law and the courts to attempt to curb Anglo-Catholic influence. In 1855 Lord Palmerston delegates selection of Bishops to the Earl of Shaftsbury to insure evangelical preferment.

In an effort to deal with the growth of the Church around the world, most particularly the Anglican Church, Archbishop Longley holds the first Lambeth Conference. The next Lambeth Conference in 1888, seeking to define a basis for Church unity worldwide, takes the material produced by General Convention in Chicago and develops the Chicago –Lambeth Quadrilateral.

During this period, there were also important developments in Anglo- Catholic views on the priesthood. There was also a surge of scholarship of a more liberal turn attempting to reconcile modern scientific views of the world and the faith.

The Evangelicals' Church Association (formed in 1865) led the battle against Ritualism in the courts, but it also split the Evangelical party. By no means all the Evangelical clergy approved of its tactics, its vehemence or its negativity. This was a period at which Evangelical clergy were reckoned to number about a third of all clergy in the Church. These mid-Victorian numbers marked the high tide of Evangelical strength and influence in the Church of England

The end of this Century also saw the rise of Pentecostalism, which with the Methodist Movement would have a great influence on the Anglican Church worldwide.

240

Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology 1900 – 1950 AD

1926 Essays Catholic and Critical 1932 Charles Gore 1936 Gospel and the Catholic Church Edward Gordon Selwyn dies Michael Ramsey

1928 Prayer Book controversy (UK)

1912 Missionary Methods Anglican Evangelical Church 1942 William Temple (1881-1944) St. Paul’s or Ours, Roland Allen Movement founded 1923 Archbishop of Canterbury 1943-1944)

Handley Moule Bishop Bible Churchman’s Missionary 1924 Edward Nash (1898 – 1982) priest John Stott (1921 – 2011) (1901-1920) Society founded 1922 post-war British evangelical resurgence All Sts Langham Place (1945-1975)

1907 A Pentecost for England 1916 The Justification of God 1929 East African Revival Alexander Boddy (1854-1930) P.T.Forsythe (1848-1921) begins in Uganda

Welsh Revival (1904- 1914 Assemblies of 1905) God founded

1913 General Convention calls for 1917 CPF 1st Conference on Christian Politics 1938 WWII a church Pension Fund established Economics and Citizenship 1924 begins (UK)

1908 5th Lambeth Conference 1920 6th Lambeth Conference 1930 7th Lambeth Conference George VI 1948 8th Lambeth Conference (Archbishop Davidson) (Archbishop Davidson) (Archbishop Lang) (1936-1952) (Archbishop Fisher)

Edward VI George V WWI 1928 3rd BCP adopted Ed ward VII 1940 WWII 1945 WWII (1901-1910) (1910-1936) (1914-1918) by PECUSA 1936 (abdicated) begins (US) ends * . * . * . . . * * . * 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950

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All three perspectives were reeling as they struggled to deal with the frantic pace of modern change. Two world wars further complicated issues adding new obstacles for the Church to overcome. Because of debts from the war, in 1913, Income tax became part of American life. The provision for deaconesses was as uncertain as the definition of their position in the church. A pension plan was developed for deaconesses in the US through the Church Life Insurance Corp., but it was poorly funded.

Modern apologists stepped up for the faith in modern times. Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) and C.S. Lewis (1898- 1963), popular fiction writers wrote and lectured, defending traditional for a modern audience

Parliament rejects1928 BCP revision and 1662 remains official BCP, making a stand against the popular trend toward Anglo-Catholic thought. By the early 20th century, theologians such as Michael Ramsey had come to understand the apostolic succession as a sign to the whole Church (episcopal and otherwise) of the unity we ought to have, even in the midst of our denominational divisions.

The war years and their immediate aftermath saw Anglican Evangelicals still embattled and defensive, though with a hopeful up-tick at the end. For the most part, Randle Manwaring's chapter titles for the inter-War period sum up the matter, as for example "The Defensive Years" and "Continuing Nadir." J.I. Packer later characterized Evangelicals in the 1930s and 1940s as "bumping along the bottom

One more step would link the Pentecostal movement with Anglicanism in the 1960s. Pentecostals in the early 1900s were mostly from a Methodist background and familiar with the teaching about a second experience after conversion, a baptism of sanctification

241

Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology 1950 – 1975 AD

1965 Called to Serve, Michael Green (1930-present) priest, theologian

1953 J I Packer (1926 – present) 1961 Dick Lucas (1925 – present) rector priest, professor, author St Helen’s Bishopsgate (1961-1998)

1950 Dennis Bennet, priest 1959 P E Hughes (1915-1990) priest, 1960 Jean and Donald Stone 1973 Episcopal Charismatic Fellowship, Terry Fulham receives HS baptism editor of The Churchman (1959-67) found the Blessed Trinity Society (later renamed Episcopal Renewal Ministries) endorses charismatic renewal 1961 BTS – Trinity magazine (’61-’68)

1960 Dennis Bennet preaches 1967 National Evangelical Anglican about the HS from the pulpit Conference established

1962 Michael Harper priest, receives baptism of the HS

1958 9th Lambeth Conference 1974 Irregular ordination of 11 new female (Archbishop Fisher) deacons to the priesthood in Philadelphia

1954 Billy Graham 1968LambethConference 1st UK crusade (Archbishop Ramsey)

Elizabeth II 1965 Bishop Pike irregularly ordains 1970 General Convention (1952-present) Phyllis Edwards deacon eliminates deaconess canon * * * . * . . * * 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975

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The 60’s and 70’s were the pivotal years for the development of the Charismatic perspective in the Anglican world. In an increasingly complicated world, many felt that issues of faith, at least, should be simpler. A huge recognition of the power of the Holy Spirit seemed to be sweeping through the life of congregations in England and America. This seemed to parallel the move for change in the structure and worship language of the Church and the urge for societal change in the surrounding culture.

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Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology 1975 - 2000

1993Eric Mascall (1905-1993) dies

1975 Davis Sheppard (1929-2000) made Bishop of Liverpool (1975-1997)

1980 C of E authorizes first Alternative Service Book

1976 Gospel and Spirit, expresses Evangelical and Charismatic perspectives

1978 Harper and Fulham organize 1994 Toronto Blessing pre-conference for Lambeth

1978 11th Lambeth Conference 1988 12th Lambeth Conference 1998 13th Lambeth Conference (Archbishop Coggin) (Archbishop Runcie) (Archbishop Carey)

1979 4th BCP adopted by TEC

* . * * * . . * * 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000

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The concerns over differences in theological perspective seemed to fade in the face of larder concerns caused by proponents of wholesale change in the life of the Church. Evangelicals and Charismatics found their common interest in upholding a Scriptural faith and both groups benefited by combining their strengths. Anglo-Catholics found a more conservative stance on Scripture as they contrasted the efforts of the early Church to avoid heresy against the modernist liberal embrace of every new thought and moral novelty. This laid the groundwork for a thoughtful effort to work together and hold each other’s differences in creative tension, rather than the strident conflicts of earlier centuries.

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Perspectives in Anglican Ecclesiology 2000 AD – present

2003 N T Wright (1948-present)

Bishop of Durham (2003-’10)

2004 C of E issues Mission-shaped Church: Church Planting and

Fresh Expressions of Church in a Changing Context

2008 GAFCON, Jerusalem

2009 ACNA

2000 Optional 2008 13th Lambeth Conference

Series issued in UK (Archbishop Williams)

* . . * . . * * 2000 2005 2010 2015

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In this present time, it has become necessary to hold the goal of maintaining the truth of the faith above the predominance of any one position. It is to be hoped that by understanding the nature and development of all three positions currently found in our midst, we also will be able to choose the best of each as we come to the Ecclesiology we will hold to in our portion of the Anglican Church.

The future belongs to the Global South in the Anglican Communion. Their story will be theirs to tell, and likewise the ecclesiology (indeed ecclesiologies) that they articulate. This is a good time to draw a line under the history of Anglican Evangelicals in the West, particularly in Britain where they have been most articulate theologically in the period since 1967.

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A Case for Anglican Unity

It its study of the three broad strands of Anglicanism, the Holy Orders Task Force has discovered at least four "families" of ecclesiologies.1 However we have not discovered Scriptural texts that positively require any of these models to the exclusion of the others. Arguments for each of these traditions involve exegesis, inference and application, which in all cases have been open to debate. Therefore we are uneasy about commending any one of these ecclesiologies as the only legitimate option for Anglicans.

However, we are aware amongst ourselves of very strong attachments to each of these four traditions. Each model represents a vision of Christ's will for the Church, and therefore a matter of urgent concern. We have come to speak to each other about our own ecclesiologies as if they were "1.1 Order" matters - not absolutely necessary for salvation, but very deeply valued and held.

Ecclesiologies as "1.1 Order" issues could very well fracture the Anglican Church in North America, and indeed the worldwide Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, the "Gafcon" movement. Nevertheless we are all agreed that - even with our cherished and very different ecclesiologies - we want to remain in communion with each other, in a single Anglican Church in North America.

Several considerations move us to desire this continuing unity, in spite of the strong centrifugal forces that our different ecclesiologies exert.

First, we appeal to the same authorities. Holy Scripture, the 39 Articles, and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer are the norms and standards that we all acknowledge. We all agree that the ecumenical Creeds articulate the parameters of our Faith. We all hope that further "mining" of these common treasures might produce agreements on a deep level, which might help us to accommodate one another in our varied beliefs about the Church.

Second, we all share the same story, not merely the great Biblical Story, but the particular Anglican story of fellowship and struggle over the past five hundred years. We revere many of the same heroes. We all appeal to Richard Hooker, albeit for different purposes and with different conclusions. We are one Christian tribe. We have many common memories, both pleasant and painful, but chapters in the same story.

Third, we Anglicans have the opportunity to hold together several Biblical themes, which other modern Western denominations have embraced singly and with which they have "hived off" into further schism. We can make good cases for the legitimacy (for example) of Catholic sacramentalism, Reformed Evangelical Biblical preaching, Revivalist Evangelical missions, and Charismatic gifts. Each of these emphases has volatile boundaries. Each of us on the Task Force faces the temptation to define our own perspective as “True Anglicanism.” We think that the difficult task of holding together these (often fissiparous) themes is worth attempting, in the service of a fully Biblical Christianity.

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Fourth, we all recognize the tactical advantage of unity, in the face of neo-pagan North America. "Divide and conquer" is the devil's strategy.

Finally, we all feel (with varying degrees of intensity, perhaps) that we all need each other. Each of our traditions compensates in some ways for arguable deficiencies in others. A Revivalist Evangelical on the Task Force might say that his or her "strand" needs the help of Anglo-Catholics (for example) in at least the following areas:

Tradition: an awareness of the depth and the riches of Christian history, the accountability that we owe today to the work of the Holy Spirit in the past, and (not least) the perversity of trying constantly to re-invent the wheel.

Catechesis: Revivalist Evangelicals still feel tempted to view conversion as a single cataclysmic moment, and need Anglo-Catholics to remind them that acquiring a Christian habitus is a lifelong process as well.

The Sacraments: Revivalist Evangelicals still struggle to avoid Gnosticism, specifically the sense that only the Word communicates truth, and that physical objects cannot do so. This view seems not to take full account of the doctrine of Creation. Nor does it fully appreciate the evident fact that people learn by doing even more than by hearing.

Iconography: A glance at many Revivalist Evangelical church buildings will reveal the visual impoverishment of that tradition. Surely there is a via media between the hypertrophied clutter of late medieval church decoration, and the sterile environment of the church building as lecture hall.

For all these and other reasons, the Task Force are agreed that the case for contemporary Anglican unity is strong. We recommend further cooperative study of the riches of our tradition, to discover how and to what degree our differing ecclesiologies may be mutually enriching and not divisive.

1 Anglo-Catholic, Reformed Evangelical, Revivalist Evangelical, and Charismatic.

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Appendix I The Order of Deaconesses in the American Episcopal Church

It is clear from Scripture that the origin of the diaconate was rooted in the efforts of the Church to address the vastness, complexity and seemingly endless demands of daily human need while still energetically preaching, teaching and attending to the spiritual and sacramental needs of her people. As the Church grew, men and women served as deacons and deaconesses, dedicated to that office as the focus of their ministry. Eventually, the diaconate faded in importance and became a predominantly transitional order.

But when industrialization and urbanization once again challenged the Church with the overwhelming immediacy of human need, those who were advocating that the Church look to the Apostolic and the undivided Church as a source of renewal and guidance, also proposed a renewal of a vocational diaconate, especially the restoration of deaconesses, as an avenue for the Church to address the issue.

Although this movement began in England, the unique circumstances of the American Episcopal Church led to a rapid acceptance and use of permanent deacons and deaconesses. Isolated communities, diverse ethnic groups in need of missionaries, widows and orphans from the Civil War, waves of immigrants and rapidly growing urban populations all presented the Church with a challenge in an era when social work was almost entirely the concern of the Church or private charities.

So, while the recently instituted Lambeth Conference acknowledged with approval the revival of the office of deaconess in the Anglican Church at their fourth meeting in 18971, General Convention officially added a definition of deaconesses and their ministry to the Canons in 18892. Official institutions were established for their education and training and the deaconesses served a vital ministry through the depressions and waves of immigrants during the turn of the century, two World Wars and through the turbulent social concerns of the sixties. Which begs the question, why are there no longer deaconesses in the Episcopal Church?

As the origins of the diaconate sprang from primarily pragmatic reasons, the disappearance of the order of deaconesses was also due to mainly pragmatic, rather than theological pressures. With the addition of the 16th Amendment and the passage of the Revenue Act of 1913, income taxes became a reality for the American worker3. Previous to this time, the retirement needs of clergy were provided for according to the decisions of each Diocese and not provided by one, comprehensive, national plan. The General Convention of 1913 called for the establishment of a Church Pension Fund, which would follow the example of the newly popular pension plans being adopted by many large companies, to provide all Episcopal Church clergy with a secure pension, individual tax benefits and many other beneficial services4.

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By 1917, the Church Pension Fund was up and running. However, when the General Convention of 1919 requested that the Clergy Fund include provision for deaconesses, the board refused. They contended that deaconesses were not clergy and therefore not eligible5. The matter was referred to the next Lambeth Conference, delayed until 1920 because of World War I6. Lambeth stated that deaconesses were within the order of the diaconate, and therefore were clergy7. The services for ordaining deaconesses should be the same as a standard diaconal ordination, with appropriate alterations to suit the situation8. They affirmed that deaconesses are ordained to their office and financial provisions should be provided for them9.

The pension fund countered with the argument that Canon 51 of the Episcopal Church described deaconesses as being set aside, so this meant they were not ordained10. The fund’s definition of and provision for a deacon was based on the modern understanding of the diaconate as a temporary and transitional position. When Lambeth addressed the issue again in 1930, they clarified their definition of a deaconess being within the diaconate as in the understanding of the diaconate found in the Early Church and not the modern, transitional diaconate11. They recommended that ordinations for deaconesses should be done by the bishops in the church, but with minor and appropriate alterations in the wording and never at the same time as ordinations of transitional deacons or ordinations to the priesthood12. They also strongly recommended that deaconesses should be paid and provided with a pension13.

The argument continued back and forth, through the World War II and beyond. Compromises were made, and a Pension Plan for Deaconesses was developed through the Church Life Insurance Corporation14, but it was poorly funded and not able to provide for its members effectively, forcing many deaconesses to maintain secular employment as well as active participation in ministry into their eighties. The reduction in young men available for full time ministry caused by the drain of World War II, the Korean conflict and Vietnam brought the issue of permanent, vocational deacons to the forefront of the agenda of many denominations. But, although Lambeth pushed heavily to promote a non-transitional diaconate for men and to support deaconesses in their ministry15, adequate provision for retirement was a sticking point. With the many new opportunities open to women, few were inspired to commit themselves to a ministry that offered little financial benefit and no retirement security.

The Church Pension Fund was not a villain in this struggle. Neither the Canons, nor the Prayer Book clearly represent the difference between a vocational and transitional deacon and their function in the life of the Church. The office of deacon itself has been the object of modern debate, for while deacons are ordained clergy, they occupy a position in many ways analogous to a sergeant in the army. They have the same subtle distinction of identity experienced by non- commissioned officers, the highest rank among enlisted soldiers. They have undeniable authority and are vital to the training and day-to-day function of the troops, yet they do not have the same privileges or recognition, and cannot move on to officer status, with rare exceptions, without further education and being accepted as officer candidates. Deacons are ordained clergy, but they may not perform any sacerdotal

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function reserved to a priest or a bishop. It is easy to understand why the board of the Church Pension Fund did not interpret the diaconate as being a permanent vocation.

The American Episcopal Church was under pressure to do something to move the situation forward. As they describe the situation on their own website, “The transformation of deaconesses into deacons was the result of decades of conversation, studies, reports, declarations, and a little ‘street theater.’”16 In 1965, Bishop Pike decided that the modification of language of Canon 51 in 1964, to change the wording from ‘set apart’ to ‘ordered’, justified his making Phyllis Edwards a deacon in his diocese. As with so many of Bishop Pike’s actions, he was reproved but not judged and Phyllis Edwards’ standing as a deacon was allowed to remain. This then provided the loophole that had been needed to solve the problem. A flurry of studies and papers ensued, with the result that it was proposed that the next General Convention would eliminate the deaconess canon17. This position was further encouraged when the Lambeth Conference of 1968, working to encourage the growth of a vocational diaconate, produced resolution 32. It stated that this diaconate was to include “men and women remaining in secular occupations” and that “deaconesses … be declared within the diaconate”18.

In 1970, General Convention eliminated the deaconess canon and ruled that women would from this time forward be ordained as deacons, equally with men, which allowed them to be included as eligible for the pension fund19. Any attempt to change the ordination service to reflect the difference between vocational and transitional deacons would be left to those wrestling with finalizing the proposed new Prayer Book. No such distinctions were made or included in the new Prayer Book, further confusing any ability to understand or distinguish any difference between vocational and transitional deacons.

The same conference also declared all women presently ordained deaconesses from that moment on and with no further choice or action, to be deacons20.

This was not agreeable to all deaconesses, many of whom refused to be addressed as deacons. But, a step that was hoped by many to provide for a stronger and more vital permanent diaconate did more to muddy the distinction between vocational and transitional deacons than to encourage more men and women to consider it as a permanent vocation.

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Full Text of the Lambeth Resolutions relating to Deaconesses 1897-1968

Lambeth Conference 1897

Resolution 11 That this Conference recognises with thankfulness the revival alike of brotherhoods and sisterhoods and of the office of deaconess in our branch of the Church, and commends to the attention of the Church the Report of the Committee appointed to consider the Relation of Religious Communities to the Episcopate.

Lambeth Conference 1920

Resolution 47 The Position of Women in the Councils and Ministrations of the Church

The time has come when, in the interests of the Church at large, and in particular of the development of the ministry of women, the diaconate of women should be restored formally and canonically, and should be recognised throughout the Anglican Communion.

Resolution 48 The Position of Women in the Councils and Ministrations of the Church

The order of deaconesses is for women the one and only order of the ministry which has the stamp of apostolic approval, and is for women the only order of the ministry which we can recommend that our branch of the Catholic Church should recognise and use.

Resolution 49 The Position of Women in the Councils and Ministrations of the Church

The office of deaconess is primarily a ministry of succour, bodily and spiritual, especially to women, and should follow the lines of the primitive rather than of the modern diaconate of men. It should be understood that the deaconess dedicates herself to a life-long service, but that no vow or implied promise of celibacy should be required as necessary for admission to the order. Nevertheless, deaconesses who desire to do so may legitimately pledge themselves either as members of a community, or as individuals, to a celibate life.

Resolution 50 The Position of Women in the Councils and Ministrations of the Church

In every branch of the Anglican Communion there should be adopted a Form and Manner of Making of Deaconesses such as might fitly find a place in the Book of Common Prayer, containing in all cases provision for:

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1. prayer by the bishop and the laying-on of his hands; 2. a formula giving authority to execute the office of a deaconess in the Church of God; 3. the delivery of the New Testament by the bishop to each candidate.

Resolution 51 The Position of Women in the Councils and Ministrations of the Church

The Forms for the Making and Ordering of Deaconesses should be of the same general character, and as far as possible similar in their most significant parts, though varying in less important details in accordance with local needs.

Resolution 52 The Position of Women in the Councils and Ministrations of the Church

The following functions may be entrusted to the deaconess, in addition to the ordinary duties which would normally fall to her: 1. to prepare candidates for baptism and confirmation; 2. to assist at the administration of Holy Baptism; and to be the administrant in cases of necessity in virtue of her office; 3. to pray with and give counsel to such women as desire help in difficulties and perplexities; 4. with the approval of the bishop and of the parish priest, and under such conditions as shall from time to time be laid down by the bishop: i. in church to read Morning and Evening Prayer and the Litany, except such portions as are assigned to the priest only; ii. in church also to lead in prayer and, under licence of the bishop, to instruct and exhort the congregation.

Voting on Clause d (ii): For 117; Against 81.

Resolution 53 The Position of Women in the Councils and Ministrations of the Church

Opportunity should be given to women as to men (duly qualified and approved by the bishop) to speak in consecrated or unconsecrated buildings, and to lead in prayer, at other than the regular and appointed services of the Church. Such diocesan arrangements, both for men and for women, should wherever possible be subject to provincial control and co- ordination.

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Resolution 54 The Position of Women in the Councils and Ministrations of the Church

The Conference recommends that careful inquiry should be made in the several branches of the Anglican Communion as to the position and recognition of women workers in the Church, the conditions of their employment, and the remuneration of those who receive salaries.

Lambeth Conference 1930

Resolution 66 The Ministry of the Church - The Ministry of Women

The Conference wishes to insist on the great importance of offering to women of ability and education, who have received adequate special training, posts which provide full scope for their powers and bring to them real partnership with those who direct the work of the Church, and genuine responsibility for their share of it, whether in parish or diocese; so that such women may find in the Church's service a sphere for the exercise of their capacity.

Resolution 67 The Ministry of the Church - The Ministry of Women

The order of deaconess is for women the one and only order of the ministry which we can recommend our branch of the Catholic Church to recognise and use.

Resolution 68 The Ministry of the Church - The Ministry of Women

The ordination of a deaconess should everywhere include prayer by the bishop and the laying-on of hands, the delivery of the New Testament to the candidate, and a formula giving authority to execute the office of a deaconess in the Church of God. Such ordination need not be at the Ember seasons, and should not be combined with an ordination or priests or deacons, but should always be held in the face of the Church.

Resolution 69 The Ministry of the Church - The Ministry of Women

The Conference re-asserts the words in Resolution 49 of the Lambeth Conference of 1920, viz."The office of a deaconess is primarily a ministry of succour, bodily and spiritual, especially to women, and should follow the lines of the primitive rather than of the modern diaconate of men." It should be understood that the deaconess dedicates herself to a life- long service, but no vow or implied promise of celibacy should be required as necessary for admission to the order.

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Resolution 70 The Ministry of the Church - The Ministry of Women

Under the sanction of the province, the bishop may, on the request of the parish priest, entrust the following functions to the ordained deaconess: a. to assist the minister in the preparation of candidates for baptism and for confirmation; b. to assist at the administration of Holy Baptism by virtue of her office; c. to baptize in church, and to officiate at the Churching of Women; d. in church to read Morning and Evening Prayer and the Litany, except such portions as are reserved to the priest, and to lead in prayer; with the license of the bishop, to instruct and preach, except in the service of Holy Communion.

Resolution 71 The Ministry of the Church - The Ministry of Women

The Conference recommends that bishops give commissions to women of special qualifications to speak at other than the regular services, or to conduct retreats, or to give spiritual counsel.

Resolution 72 The Ministry of the Church - The Ministry of Women

Every stipendiary woman worker, whether parochial or other, should receive formal recognition from the bishop, who should satisfy himself not only of her general fitness, but also that an adequate stipend is secured to her with provision for a pension, and that she works under a definite form of agreement.

Lambeth Conference 1958

Resolution 88 Ministries and Manpower - The Office of Deacon

The Conference recommends that each province of the Anglican Communion shall consider whether the office of deacon shall be restored to its primitive place as a distinctive order in the Church, instead of being regarded as a probationary period for the priesthood.

Resolution 93 Ministries and Manpower - The Contribution of Women

The Conference thankfully recognises the particular contribution of women to the mission of the Church; and urges that fuller use should be made of trained and qualified women, and that spheres of progressive responsibility and greater security should be planned for them.

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Lambeth Conference 1968

Resolution 32 The Ministry - The Diaconate

The Conference recommends: (a) That the diaconate, combining service of others with liturgical functions, be open to (i) men and women remaining in secular occupations, (ii) full-time church workers, (iii) those selected for priesthood. (b) That Ordinals should, where necessary, be revised: (i) to take account of the new role envisaged for the diaconate; (ii) by the removal of reference to the diaconate as "an inferior office"; (iii) by emphasis upon the continuing element of "diakonia" in the ministry of bishops and priests. (c) That those made deaconesses by laying-on of hands with appropriate prayers be declared to be within the diaconate. (d) That appropriate canonical legislation be enacted by provinces and regional Churches to provide for those already ordained deaconesses.

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Endnotes

1 Welby, Justin. Archbishop’s roles and priorities – Lambeth Conference. 2015. Archbishop of Canterbury.org. 4 September 2015. www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/pages/lambeth-conference/html . 2 Veal, the Rev. Canon David. “A Chronology of the Diaconate 325-1988”. 6 December 1997. Diocese of Northwest Texas. 10 December 2014. < http://www.nwt.org/d-chronology.htm>. 3 EBRI.“History of Pension Plans”. March 1998. Employee Benefit Research Institute . 2 September 2015 . 4 CPG. Our History. Church Pension Group. 4 September 2015.< https://www.cpg.org/global/about- us/overview/our-history/>. 5 Darling, “A Chronology of Events Concerning WOMEN IN HOLY ORDERS” based on chronologies by Jan Pierce (1984) and Sue Pierce (1989). Information is incomplete. Women’s Ministries. Episcopal Church.org. 10 December 2014. . 6 Welby 7 Lambeth 1920. Resolutions 47-54. Anglican Communion.org. 10 December 2014. . , 47-48 8 Lambeth 1920, 50-51. 9 Lambeth 1920, 54. 10 Schjonberg, Mary Frances. “Toward Columbus: Movement for full inclusion of women's ministries has long history”. 21 April 2006. Episcopal News Service Archive. 10 December2014. . 11 Lambeth 1930. Resolutions 66-72. Anglican Communion.org. 10 December 2014. . , 69. 12 Lambeth 1930, 68. 13 Lambeth1930, 72. 14 General Convention 2006, Constitution and Canons (canon 8). 2006. Archives of the Episcopal Church . 4 September 2015. . 15 Veal. 16 Darling, Pam. “25 Years Ago - The struggles to authorize women's ordination”. Women's Ministries Episcopal Church.org. 10 December 2014. . 17 Ibid. 18 Lambeth 1968. Resolution 32. Anglican Communion.org. 10 December 2014. , 32. 19 White, Edwin and Dykman, Jackson. ANNOTATED CONSTITUTION AND CANONS for the Government of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America otherwise known as the Episcopal Church. (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated). 1997. Archives of the Episcopal Church, 10 December 2014. , 943-44{915-16} 20 Ibid

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Appendix II Chart on Women’s Ordination in the Anglican Provinces

We are doing our prayerful discernment on the question of Women in Holy Orders in the context of our global Anglican Community as well as in North America This research was done to help us better appreciate what other Provinces are doing to help us identify what questions we should address in our discernment process. One example is the competing assumptions that most Anglican Provinces do or do not ordain women. So what are the practices of Anglican Provinces today?

This chart reviews the Anglican Provinces. Please note that it separates the Global South from the non-Global South Provinces, so we easily can see the practices of the biblically faithful Anglicans. It is interesting to note that thirty-two of thirty-eight Provinces which include eighteen of the twenty four in the Global South and six of the eight in GAFCON ordain women, although three of these ordain women to the diaconate only. The six Global South Provinces that do not ordain women were grouped together at the top of the chart for comparison sake.

Chart on Women’s Ordination in the Anglican Provinces Anglican Provinces Does not ordain Deacon only Priest/Deacon Bishop/Priest/ to any order Deacon

Global South Central Africa Congo Burundi Bangladesh Melanesia Pakistan Jerusalem/Middle North India Myanmar East Southern Africa Nigeria West Africa South India Papua New Guinea West Indies Southeast Asia

GAFCON ( ACNA practice varies ………………….. ) Sudan Tanzania Kenya Rwanda South America Uganda

Other Korea Aoteroa/New Zealand/Polynesia Australia Brazil Church of England Japan (Nippon Sei Ko Kai) Mexico Philippines Scottish Episcopal TEC Wales

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Section IV: The Arguments For and Against

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Perspectives on the Issue

In the previous section the Theological Task Force on Holy Orders (Task Force) presented two papers, which represent two general approaches to the Anglican way of living the Christian faith. Any title for these perspectives in the Anglican tradition inadequately describes them, but for the purposes of the report, we referred to them as the Evangelical and Catholic perspectives.

Our Province often speaks of three “streams” or “strands” rather than two, but the Charismatic strand has close historical ties to the Evangelical wing of the church, and we have observed that they share a common approach to ecclesiology and ordained ministry. The intention of this section is to help the Catholic and Evangelical perspectives understand each other, as a basis for further discussion.

This section concludes with a bibliography of sources recommended for further study, representing the arguments for and against the ordination of women among both Evangelical and Catholic scholars. Our goal is to present a way for the College of Bishops to consider these studies within the boundaries of an orthodox Anglican context. The College also is encouraged to reflect upon the ecclesiological and hermeneutical principles that have been previously presented and accepted by the bishops, as these arguments are considered.

Among both Evangelicals and Catholics there are voices for and against the ordination of women; however, those in favor of ordaining women are predominantly found in an Evangelical context, and those opposed to ordaining women represent the majority of Catholics. This report attempts to present the pro and con arguments within each perspective, recognizing that individual members of our province may consider their own perspective to be more nuanced than what is represented in this report. The goal of this report is to present the basic underlying principles, which guide Anglicans in determining whether or not to accept the ordination of women.

The breadth of tolerance for theological diversity is simultaneously a strength and weakness of Anglicanism. Our tradition is enriched by its embrace of the best that each perspective offers to the church; however, the coexistence of the Evangelical and Catholic perspectives has been a source of tension in each generation. When facing such tensions, Anglicans have sharply differed, even to the point of contradiction, over descriptions of ecclesiology and the sacraments. However, those differences rarely have had the consequence of one side rejecting the legitimacy of someone's ordination. As long as the accepted formularies were employed, differences in theological reflection on the formularies did not call into question the “validity” of a particular person’s ordination.

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Our report demonstrates that opposing views over the ordination of women within the tradition are drawing upon the same divergent principles of ecclesiology that have remained permissible within the Anglican fold. Regarding this issue, differing ecclesiologies and hermeneutical approaches have the painful consequence of leading adherents of one perspective to call into question the ordained ministry of women who are ordained on the basis of the other. The coexistence of both perspectives in our Province, as it pertains to this particular issue, presents a major challenge to unity.

It is important to note that the solution to the problem is not to be found in the discovery the single “right” or “best” argument. The existence of such an easy solution presupposes a uniform acceptance of the underlying principles of one of the aforementioned perspectives. Equally intelligent and theologically astute Anglicans may continue to arrive at their opposing positions, because these positions are derived from divergent starting points, regarding the interpretation of Scripture and the nature of the ordained ministry.

This is not to say that the church is locked into an impasse and cannot advance beyond the current situation; but in the process of dialogue, adherents to each perspective must be aware of the extent to which the other is grounded in presuppositions that are acceptable within the Anglican tradition. There will be more about this in the concluding statement of the Task Force’s final report to the College of Bishops.

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Anglican Evangelicals and Women's Ordination

Anglican Evangelicals in the modern world have articulated a Protestant doctrine of the Church, as the previous report has demonstrated. The Word of God is primary for the constitution and the well-being of the Church, which is a "congregation" of people called into salvation by that Word. The primary ministry of leaders in the Church is to preach and teach the Word of God. The details of their calling, ordination and ministry are at the discretion of the Church. Polity is an adiaphoron, an important matter but not one that is specified by Scripture. Therefore, the criterion for assessing this or that matter of polity is not whether Scripture teaches it explicitly, as if this or that detail were necessary for salvation. Rather, the issue is whether Scripture actually forbids the practice, or strongly implies its prohibition.

In the case of women's ordination, contemporary Anglican Evangelicals in the west do not agree about what the Scripture says. Does the Bible exclude women from leadership in the Church, or does it encourage their ministry in that capacity? The texts are few that speak directly to that issue, so a great deal depends upon inference. The central issue is "headship," namely whether or not the Bible teaches (explicitly or by inference) that men should have authority over women, or contrariwise that men and women should exercise leadership collegially. If the former, women should then be excluded from at least the higher offices in the Church that involve "headship," particularly the presbyterate and the episcopate (some would include the diaconate as well). If the latter, then there is no reason why qualified women should not be appointed to all three orders of leadership.

In 2003 the Anglican Mission in America (AMIA) published an excellent summary of the various Anglican arguments for and against women's ordination.1 After introducing the issue of "headship," the report examined all the relevant texts ("pro" and "con") and showed how either side might interpret and/or draw inferences from each. Finally the report suggested eight options amongst which AMIA might choose, in reference to women's ordination. The report did not intend to settle the issue, but to inform AMIA's two sponsoring archbishops at the time, bringing them up to date on the controversy in the West. In particular, the report intended to offer an example of careful exegesis (by either side) of the 2 relevant texts, which it did in exemplary fashion.

The thoroughness and care of the AMIA report makes it unnecessary to repeat its excellent work here. Building on this careful and thoughtful work, the present paper will try to do three things:

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1. To make some preliminary remarks about nomenclature - that is, how we will refer to either side in the controversy.

2. To discuss the impact of contemporary western society on both sides of the argument, showing that each position has been strongly influenced by societal and intellectual trends in the last fifty years. Both sides approach the Biblical texts with certain presuppositions. This paper will argue that in either case, the influence of current trends has been strong in shaping these assumptions. Therefore the matter is well worth bringing to consciousness.

3. To show how the presuppositions of each side influence their exegesis of relevant texts, by offering four examples of key texts in whose interpretation, prior assumptions lead to different conclusions.

The Matter of Names

For the last forty years or so, amongst Protestants in the West, opponents of women's ordination have called themselves "complementarians." This term is useful as far as it goes, for it signals that men and women are different. Each sex has its particular strengths, and the two are meant to complement each other. But this term fails to make the correlative point (equally important to the "con" position) that because of these distinctions, God intends that men should exercise authority over women in the family and in the Church. In these domains, men rule and women submit. In God's order for each dimension, there is a hierarchy. Therefore in order to describe the "con" position accurately, we should call its proponents "hierarchical complementarians." The term is an ugly mouthful, but it is accurate - and serves better to distinguish the "con" position from the "pro."

In the past few decades, Protestant advocates of women's ordination have generally been content to call themselves "egalitarians." Again this term is useful as far as it goes, for it suggests the basic equality of women and men in Christ, as joint heirs of the Covenant. However, by itself the term "egalitarian" fails to capture the many differences between women and men. Therefore in order to indicate the permanent duality of the sexes ("male and female created He them") it is useful to add the word "complementarian" and call the proponents of women's ordination "egalitarian complementarians." Again this term is clumsy and infelicitous, but sometimes for the sake of truth we need to spell things out. From this point of view, the Kingdom of God transcends old patterns of dominance and subordination that were a result of the fall. God now intends men and women to "be filled with the Spirit...submitting one to another" and to share leadership in mutual and collegial partnership.3

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In order to avoid tedious repetition throughout this paper, we will use the abbreviations "HC" and "EC" to denote the "con" and the "pro" viewpoints.

The Influence of Modern Western Society

Women's lives have changed radically in the West since the Industrial Revolution, and especially in the past fifty years. Up until the late 18th century, for most women in Europe and America, conditions of life had not altered much since Biblical times. Life expectancy seldom exceeded thirty-five years. Most women married, bore children every two or three years, and often died in childbirth. Their work in farming and housekeeping was crucial to the survival of their families. But their value and status in this regard did not qualify them for much formal education, or for leadership in business, politics or culture. Short life expectancy and the wheel of childbearing severely constrained women's opportunities outside the home, despite signal exceptions. Celibacy could allow women to become theologians like Julian of Norwich, rulers like Queen Elizabeth I, or heads of religious communities like Teresa of 4 Avila. For the married majority of women, however, options outside the home were nil.

Since the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century, women's worlds have expanded enormously (with an accelerating curve in the past fifty years). Women's life expectancy has risen from 35 to 80 and beyond in most western societies.5 Fertility rates have dropped to 2.1, the replacement rate, and below this in many countries.6 Women's access to higher education is now taken for granted, to the point at which women now outnumber men in undergraduate programs throughout the United States.7 And graduate programs like law and medicine are now fully open to women. Roadblocks and glass ceilings still exist. But young women in western societies today can realistically count on access to all the secular professions, with a degree of confidence that even their grandmothers could not have assumed.

It is easy to see how ECs (the pro-women's ordination movement) have seen their expectations rise amidst these revolutionary changes. All the old physical and social constraints on women's leadership have dropped away. The contrast between the Greco- Roman world of New Testament times and western women's environment today could not be stronger. Women now have up to fifty years of post-childbearing life. Western societies all encourage women to aspire to careers in which their gifts and character determine their success, and in which their sex matters less and less. To recognize all this is not to accuse ECs of capitulating to Enlightenment libertarianism or of embracing the ideologies of radical feminism. But it is plain that women today (and their male advocates) regard Church leadership with assumptions formed in the modern western environment. Protestant Biblically-minded women will read Scripture from a perspective shaped in this world. They

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will tend to read ambiguous texts with "egalitarian complementarian" eyeglasses. They will tend to view allegedly "prohibitive" texts as either correctives to specific abuses in the early Christian movement, or as tactical and temporary concessions to the ambient Greco-Roman patriarchy in the first century. To recognize modern provenance of EC assumptions is not to establish their truth or falsehood. But the environment is influential, in ways that need to be borne in mind and assessed in their exegesis of each text.

The impact of modern western society on the HCs (the "con" viewpoint) is less immediately obvious, but nevertheless just as profound. The "traditional" position on women's ordination in the West coalesced in the 13th century, with the decisions of the Fourth Lateran Council and the theological work of Thomas Aquinas. Building on Aristotle's biology, Aquinas viewed women as "defective men" whose innate mental inferiority rendered them unfit for the priesthood (other considerations quite aside, such as their inability to represent Christ in the Eucharist). This assumption of female inferiority remained constant in western Christendom (Roman Catholic and Protestant) through the mid 19th century. Women were simply not up to leadership in the Church or in society. Their physical constitution, their mental capacities, their emotional variability, all excluded them a priori from "headship." This negative assessment was the "traditional" view of women's leadership in western society up 8 until the recent past.

In the 1970s, however, certain Protestant theologians in America began to take a different tack. They quietly dropped the traditional assumption of innate female inferiority (and of course the sacramental considerations that excluded women from the Roman priesthood). Most of them kept silent on the issue of women in secular leadership. But beginning with George W. Knight in 1977, they offered a new perspective on relations between women and men in the family and in the Church. The two sexes are equal in the sight of God, they argued, and both were endowed with equally valuable gifts and talents - but qualities that were different and complementary. And God has ordained that men and women play different "roles" in the family and the Church (this was the first time the word "role" had been used to describe men's and women's differences). Man's "role" was to rule, to lead, and to protect. Women's "role" was to submit, to follow and to support. Some scholars have grounded these differences in physiology and psychology (the old "traditional" approach). But for the most part, HCs now base their belief in male headship on the command of God and on the analogy of the Trinity, as we shall see. Therefore they will approach ambiguous texts with hierarchical assumptions. And they view "prohibitive" texts as eternal and irrevocable decrees, establishing male headship and female subordination - at 9 least in the family and in the Church.

All of which is to say that both ECs and HCs exhibit the influence of modern western society in their views about women and men. Both are alike in that sense. Neither can claim a neutral perspective. Of course, to identify the provenance of their ideas - the

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Sitz im Leben of their viewpoints - is not to establish the truth or falsehood of either. One must assess both views on the basis of the Biblical Story as a whole, and see which (if either) best fits the overall narrative. But nevertheless, the genesis of both perspectives in the modern West is significant, and worth notice.

Presuppositions and Exegetical Practice

How do HC and EC perspectives work out, when it comes to interpreting the key passages on men and women in the Church and the family? Before looking at specific texts, and how they are treated, it is necessary to say a few more words about the assumptions that either side brings to the task.

Opponents of Women's Ordination and the Doctrine of the Trinity

Over the last twenty years, opponents of women's leadership have often grounded their belief in male headship on the relationship between the Son and the Father in the Trinity. In 1999 the Doctrine Commission of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney (Australia) issued a report entitled "The Doctrine of the Trinity and Its Bearing on the Relationship of Men and Women." The Report asserted not only that the Son voluntarily submitted himself to the Father in the Incarnation (as Philippians 2 describes) but that this subordination also characterizes the eternal relations between the pre-existent Son and the Father. In other words, the Report asserted:

"...a subordination which belongs to the eternal relationship between the persons of the Trinity, and not only to the humanity of Jesus in the 10 Incarnation..."

The Report argued that this perspective was not Arian, that in fact the Scriptures teach it, and the Church has held this view from the beginning. The Report concluded,

The Doctrine Commission agrees that the concept of "subordination" has significant implications. It concludes, furthermore, that the concept of "functional subordination," of equality in essence with order in relation, represents the long-held teaching of the church, and that it is securely based on the revelation of the Scriptures. This teaching should, therefore, determine our commitment both to the equality of men and women in creation and salvation, and also to appropriately biblical expressions of the 11 functional difference between men and women in home and church.

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While the Diocese of Sydney conformed to the decision of the Australian Anglican Church in 1987, in allowing the ordination of women to the diaconate, it has repeatedly declined to conform to the national Church in ordaining women to the presbyterate and the episcopate. One apologist for Sydney Diocese has described this prohibition as a "line in the sand."12 Given the prominence of Sydney Diocese in the GAFCON movement amongst orthodox Anglicans worldwide, it is not surprising that the Report's Trinitarian theology has been echoed elsewhere.

The AMIA Report of 2003 contains a carefully worded statement (in the "con" section apropos women's ordination) that also appeals to the doctrine of the Trinity in support of male headship. This passage is worth quoting in full.

In the triune life of God, as Scripture teaches and the Eastern Orthodox tradition often reminds us, there is a hierarchy among equals. An eternal headship and submission are lived out in the divine life of love. God the Father is by nature Father in His triune life. He is the eternal, loving fountainhead of the Trinity. He is eternally the Father of the Son and the primary source of the being of the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Son is ever delighted to do the Father's will. Submission to the Father is what good sons do in biblical perspective, whether they are sons among human beings or the Son in the Trinity. The Spirit is always the Spirit of the Father proceeding to us through the Son and thus the Spirit of Christ.

The main point we want to note is that loving headship and submission are eternal in the life of God. They are qualities, therefore, of the eternal order of things. This is always true of God; it is His eternal triune nature. This has consequences for God's act of creation. God's own nature and attributes provide the pattern for His act of creation and particularly for the order and life of those made in His image and likeness, men and women. We can expect to find headship and submission in the way that we have been created in relation to one another.13

Despite the care with which both the Sydney Report and this AMIA statement were crafted, it is not surprising that this appeal to the Trinity in favor of male headship has occasioned some controversy.

While Anglican opponents of women's "headship" agree on the general Biblical prohibition, they are not all of one mind on the practical implications of that prohibition in terms of Holy Orders. Sydney Diocese and the erstwhile AMIA allow ordination of women to the diaconate, evidently of the mind that the latter is a subordinate order. Jason Patterson

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of the AMIA has argued that in fact the diaconate involves certain leadership responsibilities, and that women should not be deacons, though they may be deaconesses. This is also the position of the Reformed Episcopal Church.14 At the other end of the spectrum, the late John Stott and the Reform.UK movement argue that women may be ordained to the diaconate and the presbyterate, but may not serve as rectors or in any capacities (e.g. as 15 archdeacons) in which they hold authority over men.

Nevertheless proponents of the HC position remain unified in the conviction that headship and subordination characterize the deepest structure of reality, and so they approach the relevant Biblical texts with that assumption. We shall see how that presupposition works out in practice below. But first we should look at objections to the HC Trinitarian appeal, and at the alternative assumptions that Anglican proponents of women's ordination bring to the Scriptural texts.

Advocates of Women's Ordination and the Ministry of Jesus

One of the most eminent Anglican advocates of women's ordination is the Australian theologian Kevin Giles. Originally from Sydney Diocese and a graduate of Sydney's Moore Theological College, Giles now pastors a church in the Diocese of Melbourne. From that safe distance he has published voluminously on the Sydney doctrine of the Trinity. In his first book on the subject he argued that although Sydney theologians ...would insist on their orthodoxy and would claim that they are not Arians in the classic sense, their assertion that the Son is subordinate in his person/nature/essence/being (or in his "subsistence"), and that the three persons of the Trinity are set in an eternal hierarchical order, leaves them in a very ambiguous situation at best.16 Giles goes on to argue at length that neither the Creeds nor the Fathers nor the Reformers offer any support for the Sydney position that the Son is eternally "functionally" subordinate to the Father. No major theologian or creedal document has ever supported this "eternal role subordination" of the Son, Giles argues, and he proceeds to document this contention at great length. His main points are that Sydney Trinitarian theology is false to Scripture, eccentric to tradition, and intended to support the Diocese's assertion of male headship and female subordination.

In fact in the last twenty years, there has been a turn away from appealing to the Trinity in support of any human program or policy, of whatever kind. Anglican theologian has observed that advocates of the "social doctrine of the Trinity" have appealed to the Three Persons as "imitable prototypes" for egalitarian human relations. Coakley referred to this argument as "a new idolatrous project of social utopianism."17 Other theologians have critiqued the tendency to project ideal human relations onto the Trinity, and then argue back from the Trinity to support the kind of society that they desire! This circular reasoning also assumes that we know enough about the immanent Trinity to say very much at all, and also that the analogy between the divine Persons and human beings is remotely apt.

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For all these reasons, Anglican proponents of women's ordination have steered clear of stating their case on the basis of the Trinity. A much more sustainable argument for the EC position can be made from the Incarnation, they argue, and from the actual ministry of Jesus, 18 about which we are blessed to know a great deal.

The ministry of Jesus is in fact the lens through which Anglican ECs read the passages about women in the New Testament. In the Kingdom of God that Jesus inaugurates, he reverses the centuries-old deprecation of women in Israel since the Fall. Jesus invariably treats women with courtesy and respect. He accepts them as his disciples, meaning that he welcomes them into training to be future leaders. And finally he entrusts to Mary Magdalene the honor of announcing his resurrection to the twelve and the other disciples, making her the apostle to the apostles. Jesus enacts a revolution in the history of Israel in his treatment of women. But of course it is not entirely new, for Jesus is actually restoring the original order of Creation, in which women and men together shared the image of God, and together exercised the responsibility that God gave them to rule the earth.

Amongst all the Anglican theologians who have celebrated the restored status of women in the Kingdom, Ken Bailey offers the most culturally sensitive insight into the Jewish world of the first century. In his Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, he speaks of "the radical new departure that Jesus inaugurated in relation to the equality of men and women."19 Elsewhere Bailey describes the typically negative attitude toward women in late Second Temple Judaism, quoting Ben Sirach.

A man's spite is preferable to a woman's kindness; women give rise to shame 20 and reproach.

Bailey comments,

By way of summary, Ben Sirach sees women as distinctly inferior. Except for one's wife, women are considered to be a source of evil and thus to be 21 avoided.

Conversely, Jesus points to his disciples and says, "Here are my mother and my brothers." Clearly his disciples include both men and women. Then Jesus and his disciples travel around Galilee with a group of influential women who "provided for them out of their means." Even today in rural Middle Eastern society, says Bailey, this free association of women and men would be culturally impossible; but not for Jesus. Finally Jesus specifically accepts Mary of Bethany into the men's part of the house, and firmly approves of her 22 assumption of a man's place, studying under the rabbi to become a teacher herself.

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Other Anglican scholars echo Bailey's reading of these texts. Commenting on Jesus' acceptance of Mary as a teacher-in-training, N.T. Wright, says:

That, no doubt, is at least part of the reason we find so many women in 23 positions of leadership, initiative and responsibility in the early church.

And Wright says apropos of Jesus choosing males as the original twelve apostles,

...there comes a time in the story when the disciples all forsake Jesus and run away; at that point, long before the rehabilitation of Peter and the others, it is the women who come first to the tomb, who are the first to see the risen Jesus, and who are the first to be entrusted with the news that he has been raised from the dead...This is of incalculable significance. Mary Magdalene and the others are apostles to the apostles.24

Grant LeMarquand echoes Tom Wright's argument for the importance of the women at the Resurrection.

They were the primary witnesses of the saving events of Jesus' death, burial and resurrection. All four of the gospel writers are careful to mention the presence of the women at these events, even when most of the twelve, except for the beloved disciple (according to John's Gospel) have fled the 25 scene.

So the events of Jesus' life are the center of salvation history for Anglican ECs, and the lens through which they view the Bible's teaching on men and women.

One final point is important. From the Anglican EC point of view, the Bible's overall view of relations between men and women is not simply that they are equal. Far less does the Bible argue for an undifferentiated androgyny. The partnership of men and women is more subtle and complex than that. Anglican theologian Elaine Storkey argues for "four different underlying paradigms, which are used interchangeably to describe the relationship between men and women" in Scripture. (1) The first is difference. "Eve is not the same as Adam. She is isha to his ish. Man and woman are different in terms of procreation..." and every society underscores this difference by a myriad of cultural signals. (2) Then there is sameness, or similarity. Adam exclaims, "Here at last is bone of my bone..." Men and women receive the same command to oversee creation. They bear the same moral responsibilities. They are equally worthy of their children's respect. Finally in Joel's prophecy they are equally eligible for the Spirit's gifts. (3) Likewise there is complementarity. "Correlation, reciprocity,

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symmetry are all built into the way male and female echo each other. Complementarity does not imply hierarchy... It is premised on the reciprocation and completion of female by male, and male by female." (4) Finally there is union. In marriage the two are "one flesh." Together they are "one" in the Body of Christ, just as they are in unity as the Bride of Christ. We need to bear in mind the full richness and complexity of the Bible's teaching vis-a-vis men and 26 women, or we risk distorting it by lopsided or exclusive emphasis on one or the other.

The Exegesis of Specific Texts

Here we offer just four examples of specific texts, recognized by Anglicans on both sides as crucial to the Bible’s teaching on men and women. All quotations are from the AMIA report, and there is no need to repeat the committee’s careful work. Proponents of either side may not agree in every respect with the arguments offered “pro” and “con” by the AMIA committee, but the viewpoints are typical enough for the sake of comparison.

Genesis 1 and 2

The AMIA report deals in great length and depth with the Creation story, and shows how ECs and HCs come to different conclusions about many texts. Here, for instance, are, the opposing views of Genesis 2:18 “I will make a helper suitable for him.”

The “Pro” viewpoint

God declares that he will make a helper “ezer” suitable for Adam. “Helper” in Scripture does not necessarily mean inferior or subordinate. God is frequently spoken of as our “helper” or the “helper of Israel.” There are other words in Hebrew that make it clear when the helper is a subordinate, but they were not chosen to describe the one who will be created as Adam’s helper. “Helper might be better translated “partner” as a companion that will share in the work that is to be done.

This helper will be a suitable helper “fit for him,” a helpmeet. The Hebrew word is “knegdow” and does not imply a subordinate. In the Septuagint Greek translation of the text, “kata” with the accusative is used which means “in accordance with” or “corresponding to.” The Latin Vulgate uses “homoiousios” which means “of like nature.” The emphasis of the helper’s suitability is on likeness not on subordination. Subordination must not be read into the text when it is not there.27

The “Con” perspective

The reference to being created to be a “helper” (“ezer”) for Adam in context also makes the point of his headship and her submission. It is true that a superior can be a helper to an inferior. God often serves as a helper to Israel

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and all the “sons of Adam,” to all human beings. A man can help a man, or a woman can help a woman, or a parent can help a child: but it is not said that the very creation of one was in order to be the helper of the other. That, however is precisely what is said here of the creation of the woman. Having made that point, we must quickly add that since the woman is created in the “image of God,” her dignity and her gifting are not fully defined by nor exhausted in the marriage partnership with the man: she is, however, centrally oriented and created for that relationship and service. In the context of mutual belonging and equal dignity, an order of leadership, assistance and of governing oversight and willing submission is built into Creation.28

I Corinthians 11:2-16

Here the AMIA report examines the difficult passage about head coverings (or perhaps hair styles?) in the context of Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians, not to allow their liberty in Christ to become selfish license, and to observe propriety in worship. Here are the variant interpretations of I Corinthians 11:3.

The “Pro” viewpoint:

What then is the meaning of the order that St. Paul writes? It is the chronological order of the sources. At the Creation by the Word or Son, Christ becomes Head of man, At the Creation of Eve from Adam, the man becomes the source or head of Eve. Lastly, at the Incarnation of the Son, the Father becomes Head of the Incarnate Son, Jesus the Christ. Only when viewed from the perspective of source does the order make sense.

The point of verse 11:3 is to state the principle upon which the Apostle will exhort the women to return to wearing the veil or shawl. The principle is this: we are to behave in public and in corporate worship in a manner which brings glory to our Head and evidences our grateful response for the initiation and nurture we receive. Since our Head has called us into being and nourishes us as men or as women, this honoring of headship on our part will give us evidence of and due respect to our maleness or femaleness.29

The “Con” perspective:

How are we to understand the meaning of “head” in this verse, given the order (a) of Christ as Head of man, (b) the man as head of woman and (c) God as Head of Christ? Some have suggested this is a temporal order of initiation; and, therefore, “source is the only connotation in the text. But that is far from evident and in the end will not hold. It could just as well be that the Apostle wished to place the headship of man and the submission of the

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woman in the bracket of Christ’s headship and Christ’s submission for it is Christ Who is our model and enabler of both. In that case, both authority and source would be involved in the use of “head.”30

I Corinthians 11:33-35

This passage contains the words, “women should keep silent in the churches.” Here are two different interpretations, offered by ECs and HCs respectively

The “Pro” viewpoint

This interpretation of the text sees it in the words of the Apostle Paul, but does not see it setting forth the universal principle that all women should not speak in the corporate worship of the Church. Rather the principle the Apostle is concerned to state and apply is that in corporate worship everything must be done “decently and in order” so that the entire body of Christ might be edified. He states this principle time and again, and it is uppermost in his mind as he describes to the disciples in Corinth how they should use the gift of tongues and prophecy…

…there are the insensitive, married women of our text. They too are to be silent. These women are interrupting the worship of the Church by asking too many questions as well as inappropriate questions for that setting. They have mistaken their new freedom in Christ for license to act in a self- centered manner, as if the Word of God were primarily addressed to them and not to the whole body of believers. True, they may prophesy, but they must do that decently and in due order. In all things, they are to be submissive to the elders directing the worship of the Church. If they have questions, they must wait until they are home to discuss them with their husbands. If they are spiritual Christian women, they will recognize that what the Apostle requires is a “command of the Lord” and comply. If they do not, they will be disciplined.

The concern here is stopping their disturbing behavior so that all will be done decently and in order and the entire Church will benefit from the words spoken in the worship of the Church. The issue is not male headship and female submission. That issue arose with the Fall and has been done away with by the coming of Christ.31

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The “Con” perspective:

The clue (i.e. to the interpretation of this text) is given to us in these words, “For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, even as the Law says.” (14:34). What is not permitted is a speaking that contradicts the Law. The “Law” referred to here most likely refers to the Old Testament and particularly the account of the creation of man and woman in Chapter 2 of Genesis. This concerns the subordinate role of women in the family and Church. It is a speaking that is shameful in that it violates the due order of things as established in Creation. Here, as in every other time, he addresses the role of women in relationship to men. The Apostle is concerned with God’s ordering of the man as head and the woman as supportive and submissive to his leadership. The “Law” referred to here is most likely the Old Testament and particularly the account of the creation of man and woman in Chapter 2 of Genesis. Submissionin this text refers to women submitting to the elders of the church as well as to their husbands with regard to speaking in the Church.32

I Timothy 2:11-15 This is the passage most often cited in the debate over women’s ministries in the Church. It contains the words often translated, “I do not permit women to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent” (I Timothy 2:12 NIV). The translation of almost every word is disputed by either side, as well as the intention of the whole text.

The “Pro” viewpoint:

a. “Let a woman learn in silence…”: Note that the Apostle commands that women be permitted to learn, and that they seize the opportunity to learn. This command extends far beyond women merely listening to the Word in worship settings; it implies serious study. The word Paul uses for “silence” (hesuchia) is not a word that intimates total silence but rather refers to a quietness and attitude that is appropriate for learning. As rabbinical students sit at the feet of the rabbi to learn, so women are to do the same with the teachers at Ephesus Paul is far from wishing to retain and observe pre- Christian synagogue traditions regarding women in the Church that would neglect or discourage their study of the Word of God.

b. “In full submission”: This is Paul’s requirement that women respect those set in authority over the congregation.

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c. When Paul states, “I do not permit…,” he puts it in the present continuous tense. It could better be translated, “I am not now permitting.” This seems to imply that at a future time, when conditions had been met, he would permit women to teach.

d. “to teach”: This refers to teaching in a formal manner in the worship of the Church. Often when the Apostle speaks of teaching, he exhorts the whole congregation to teach one another (Col 3:16). But here, as in the pastoral epistles generally, more formal teaching in the context of worship is in view. Only qualified people are to teach.

e. “…to have authority over men”: Paul does not use the traditional word for “authority” (exousia) but rather a word that is used only once in the New Testament, authentein, It can be interpreted to mean to usurp authority or to “lord it over” another. Paul does not permit women to grasp the authority to teach away from those placed over the congregation and thereby usurp their authority. This simply leads to chaos and error.33

The “Con” perspective:

a. “I permit no woman to teach”: This is, as already noted, in the present continuing which might suggest that at a later point he might be willing to allow a woman to teach. It could also mean “I do not now nor will ever permit a woman to teach.” which would assert an absolute refusal to women to teach. The context points in the latter direction because: (i) The mention of submission points to a male headship and female submission that St. Paul does not believe is a temporary matter, short of the of Christ, as we have often seen. (ii) He will appeal to Creation in the next verse, and we are all part of the continuing order of Creation.

b. “To teach”: What sort of teaching and what sort of audience is a woman not permitted to teach? It cannot mean that a woman is to be utterly silent in the corporate worship and public worship life of the congregation In I Corinthians 11, we listened to the Apostle instruct women in the manner in which they should be veiled when bringing a prophecy. Later in this Epistle, the Apostle tells older women to teach younger women, In many places, teaching is considered the task of the whole body of Christ, both men and women. Therefore, it must be some specific type of teaching in which women are not permitted to engage. Since this applies only to women, and since the Apostle appeals to the order of Creation by referring to submission

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c. and appealing to Genesis 2, it most likely refers to that form of teaching which is reserved for the elders of the congregation, for the “presbyteroi/episcopoi.” This is confirmed by the second prohibition “nor to have authority over men,”

d. “nor to have authority over men”: The word for authority here is “authentein” which appears only here in the New Testament. Some have suggested it is a particular kind of authority the Apostle has in mind such as a usurped authority. They suggest that if he had authority in general in mind he would have used “exousia,” a term he uses more frequently. However, two things indicate that it is simple governance or basic authority that the Apostle intends: 1. It is difficult to say that the Apostle uses “exousia” usually for he only uses it three times in all of his writings, which is too little usage to read a great deal into his writing a different word. 2. Linguistic study of the use of the word “authentein in the culture of St. Paul’s day indicate that it does not mean ‘usurped authority” but simply “authority.”

What St. Paul is saying is that women are not to exercise headship or governance over men in the congregation or in the family. The point is not that ungodly, untaught women should not teach or domineering women should not usurp authority over men but that women per se should not teach authoritatively, nor should serve in positions of headship over men in the congregation. When it comes to areas where the elders are exercising authority, the women are to learn in silence and in all submission. This interpretation is confirmed by the Apostle’s appeal to Genesis 2 and 3.34

These quotations do not exhaust what the AMIA said in its “pro” and “con” presentations on the four texts cited above. Neither do these quotations exhaust what Anglican scholars have written on these texts! And finally the AMIA Report discussed many other passages of Scripture in a similar fashion, offering arguments on the one side and the other. The quotations above are simply meant to exemplify the way in which presuppositions on either side lead to different exegetical conclusions.

The result is a “text jam.” Both sides identify the same passages as important for understanding the relationships of men and women. But the interpretations they offer are in stark contradiction. The intention of this paper has not been to adjudicate the dispute, but simply to point it out, to suggest the rival assumptions from which it arises, and to offer examples of the “text jam.” There are gifted and Christ-centered believers and scholars in both camps, no doubt with more distinguished qualifications than those of the present Task Force on Holy Orders who can continue to wrestle with the impasse.

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Endnotes

1 "A Report of the Study Concerning the Ordination of Women Undertaken by the Anglican Mission in America: A survey of the Leading Theological Convictions," unpublished paper by the Rt. Rev. John H. Rodgers and the Women's Ordination Study Team (July 31, 2003): available online at www.vulcanhammer.org/island/w.pdf. 2 AMIA's sponsoring archbishops were the Most Rev. Ping Chung Yong of South East Asia and the Most Rev. Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda. 3 Ephesians 5: 18, 21. The terms referred to above were first suggested by Kevin Giles in "The Genesis of Confusion: How 'Complementarians' Have Corrupted Communication," Priscilla Papers 29/1 (Winter, 2015), 27. 4 Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton University Press, 1996), chapter 5 examines the sociological context of Christian women in the 1st century Roman Empire. See Elaine Storkey, Origins of Difference (Baker, 2001), chapter 1 for modernity and the concomitant changes in women's situation. 5 Women's life expectancy in the USA averaged 80.3 in 2016: worldlifeexpectancy/com/usa/life-expectancy- female (10/18/16). 6 data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN? (10/18/16). 7 "Men account for only 42 percent of college graduates..." Susan Chira, "Men Need Help," New York Times, Sunday Review, 6 (October 23, 2016). 8 Kevin Giles, The Trinity & Subordination (InterVarsity Press, 2002), 145-168. 9 Giles, "The Genesis of Confusion," 22-23 and his documentation of this development. 10 "The Doctrine of the Trinity and Its Bearing on the Relationship of Men and Women," the 1999 Sydney Anglican Diocesan Doctrine Commission Report, Appendix B in Giles, The Trinity & Subordination, 127. 11 Ibid., 136. 12 Michael P. Jensen, Sydney Anglicanism: An Apology (Wipf & Stock, 2012), 126. 13 AMIA Report, 23. 14 Personal communication from the Rt. Rev. David Hicks, who also supplied the Patterson paper: J.S.S. Patterson, "Ordaining Women as Deacons: A Reappraisal of the Anglican Mission in America's Policy" (unpublished paper, 7.19.2006). 15 John Stott, Issues Facing Christians Today, 4th edition (Zondervan, 2006), chapter 12; reform.org.uk/about/thereformcovenant (10/18/16). 16 Giles, the Trinity & Subordination, 80. For an updated version of Giles's argument, see his Jesus and the Father (Zondervan, 2006). 17 Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality and the Self: An Essay 'On the Trinity' (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 270. 18 See for example Karen Kilby, "Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity," New Blackfriars 81 (2000), 432-445; Kathryn Tanner, " and Its Critics," in Giulio Maspero and Robert Wozniak, editors, Rethinking Trinitarian Theology (Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2012), chapter 16. 19 Kenneth Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes (InterVarsity Press, 2008), 189. Although the late beloved Ken Bailey was technically in Presbyterian orders, he served for many years as Canon Theologian in the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh (and so qualifies for inclusion here, amongst Anglican authors). 20 Kenneth Bailey, "Women in Ben Sirach and the New Testament," in For Me to Live: Essays in Honor of James Leon Kelso (Dinnon/Liederbach, 1972). 21 Ibid.

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22 Kenneth Bailey, "Women in the New Testament: A Middle Eastern Cultural View," Theology Matters 6/1 (Jan/Feb 2000) 2. 23 N.T. Wright, Surprised By Scripture (HarperOne, 2014), 70. 24 Ibid., 69. 25 Grant LeMarquand, "The Leadership of : One Protestant's View of the Ordination of Women," unpublished paper delivered to the Pan-Africa Association of Catholic Exegetes, September, 2015, 8. LeMarquand is Anglican Bishop for the Horn of Africa and Emeritus Professor of Biblical Studies, Trinity School for Ministry, Ambridge, PA.26 Elaine Storkey, Origins of Difference: The Gender Debate Revisited (Baker, 2001), 129-131. 27 AMIA Report, 43. 28 Ibid., 46-47. 29 Ibid., 79. 30 Ibid., 82. 31 Ibid., 86. 32 Ibid., 88. 33 Ibid., 90. 34 Ibid., 92.

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Anglo-Catholics and the Ordination of Women

The following paper aims to summarize the debate over the ordination of women within ‘Catholic’ or ‘High Church’ Anglicanism. It is intended as a ‘sequel’ of sorts to the corresponding paper in Appendix 3 of the Task Force’s Phase 3 report. That paper discussed the three distinctives of the High Church understanding of Holy Orders: the apostolic succession, the spiritual mark or ‘character’ of ordination, and the role of the priest in persona Christi. Two of these three points are reflected in the arguments here. The apostolic succession corresponds to the argument from tradition, which is the central issue in the debate. This is expanded upon by arguments concerning the symbolic role of the priest, including the priest’s representation of Christ, and by arguments concerning the Church’s relationship to the culture. The remaining topic from the previous paper, the ‘mark’ imparted in ordination, does not factor into the arguments for or against and so is not discussed in the main body of this paper. (It does, however, have a significant effect on how the conclusion is understood and is discussed in the previous section.)

Some clarifications are in order before proceeding to the main body of the paper. First, although the topic in question here is the ordination of women to the priesthood or presbyterate, it will be noted that several of the sources are specifically addressed to the matter of the consecration of women as bishops. It will be recalled from the preceding section, however, that bishops and priests are generally understood as sharing the same kind of ministry; the difference between the two orders is principally in the scope of their authority. Thus, the arguments made regarding the consecration of women to the episcopate also apply, mutatis mutandis, to the question of the priesthood, differing mainly in the degree to 1 which disagreement is felt.

On the other hand, deacons do not share this ‘kind’ of ministry. There are those who hold that ordination is a single sacrament, and that therefore all three orders must be treated alike. Likewise, it may be argued, parallel to considerations on the priesthood, that tradition uniformly supports a male ordained diaconate, and that the deacon may be considered a symbol of Christ the servant, just as the presbyter symbolizes Christ the priest. Such arguments entail that women should not be ordained as deacons, though they may serve as non-ordained deaconesses. However, there did exist a female diaconate in the early church, the exact nature of which is contested; and deacons do not hold jurisdiction or (generally) exercise a sacramental ministry. Some who oppose the ordination of women as priests and bishops, therefore, see in these points precedent or theological justification for allowing the ordination of women to the diaconate. In any case, because of the distinctions between diaconal and presbyteral ministry, the ramifications of ordaining women to the diaconate are considerably less significant than the implications of ordaining them to the priesthood and the episcopate.

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For this reason, women’s ordination to the diaconate has received less attention overall, and will not be further discussed in this paper.

A second note relates to the scope of the discussion. ‘Anglo-Catholic’ is a term with a wide range of meanings, particularly with regard to history, but also in present use. As used here,it is intended to reflect the ‘side’ of Anglicanism which reflects the three principles mentioned in the first paragraph. It is the arguments particularly which are in question; it is not claimed that every Anglican writer presented here is an Anglo-Catholic; only that their arguments fall within this range of concerns. Moreover, traditionalists frequently hold that to be truly ‘Catholic,’ one’s position should be consistent with both past tradition and the wider Church in the apostolic succession, and thus that proponents of women’s ordination, by definition, cannot be Anglo- Catholic. This paper leaves that debate to one side. Rather, a range of perspectives will be presented, in order to give ‘the lay of the land’ in what might broadly be referred to as sacramentalist Anglican discussion of the ordination of women. The ‘land,’ as it lays, is admittedly broader than the boundaries of Anglo-Catholicism as it finds expression in the Anglican Church in North America. This is particularly the case with regards to feminist perspectives. To limit the discussion to what falls within these ecclesiastical borders, however, would be a dual disservice: it would, on the one hand, provide a truncated and imbalanced view of the discussion’s dynamics; on the other, it would deprive the reader of considering some of the most vigorous arguments against the traditionalist position. Nonetheless, it should be kept in mind that no particular argument in favor of women’s ordination is, by its inclusion here, attributed to any supporters of the practice within the Anglican Church in North America.

While there is ample room for more literature on the subject of women’s ordination, there is nonetheless sufficient material to preclude an exhaustive account of every argument made on either side of the debate. The arguments presented here are therefore the major recurring arguments - or, indeed, categories of argument - represented by several sources. This is especially true of the traditional position, which presents a unified front on its central arguments. Supporters of women’s ordination, in contrast, are primarily responding to the traditionalist stance; as a result, while certain common principles can be discerned, there are a wider range of responses. This paper therefore claims to offer a comprehensive view of the main points of discussion; readers should be mindful, however, that a number of particular arguments, some of them important, have not met the criteria for inclusion in this paper. The major Anglican and ecumenical sources included in the accompanying bibliography are strongly recommended for further reading.

For the most part, the voices presented here come from within Anglicanism. There are, however, a few exceptions; for details on individual writers or documents mentioned in this text, please refer to the annotated bibliography included in this section.

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The Traditionalist Argument

Scripture and Tradition

The preceding paper on the High Church tradition noted that the apostolic succession has a dual role: to carry on the ministry of the Church instituted by Christ, but also to serve as a reminder of the Church’s accountability to Christ against other competing sources of authority. As such, it may be seen as the embodiment of the Church’s tradition. Tradition is, on the one hand, the ‘handing on’ (1 Cor. 11:23, 15:3) of the ‘faith once delivered to the saints’ (Jude 3); but it is also (in the words of Russian Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky) ‘the critical spirit of the Church’ - charged with distinguishing the true tradition or ‘handing on’ of the Gospel from mere accretions of time, habit, and culture.2 Insofar as it concerns the ‘handing on’ of the Church’s faith and practice, however, the element of continuity is important. This is the core of traditionalist objections to the ordination of women. The Church may not believe or do anything that departs from what it has received from Christ. Given the unanimous practice of orthodox Christianity in maintaining a male priesthood for nineteen centuries, to now ordain women as priests is outside what the Church has received, and is therefore beyond the Church’s authority.

The core of the Church’s tradition is the Gospel - and therefore, in the matter of ordination, the example of Jesus himself. Jesus is the Son of God, and in his incarnation the fullness of God’s revelation on earth. In his earthly ministry, therefore, he was not constrained by merely cultural considerations, but was completely free in his actions. This is indeed evident in his interactions with women, which demonstrate a degree of respect for them that is out of step with prevailing attitudes of his time. Nonetheless, in choosing his twelve apostles, he chose twelve men. If the ministry of the twelve has any bearing on the ministry of bishops and priests, even by analogy, then this example is strong precedent for an all-male ministry. Indeed, if (as many Anglo-Catholics would hold) there is some sort of continuity between the apostolic ministry and Holy Orders as we now have received them, to ordain women contrary to this example is, in fact, to alter the institution of Christ - and implicitly, to second-guess his judgment. Was Jesus, in fact, merely a first-century Jew subject to cultural foibles and prejudices which we have now escaped?

Also in Scripture is the Pauline prohibition against allowing women to teach in the Church (1 Cor. 14:34, 1 Tim. 2:12). This is generally understood among traditionalist Catholics, not as barring women from any act of instruction, but as excluding them from an office of setting forth and maintaining the Church’s teaching, analogous to that held nowadays by the ordained ministry. However, just as Christ showed an unprecedented regard for the dignity of women, Paul also clearly sets forth (e.g. Gal. 3:28) the equality of women with men before God. The restriction of ordination to men, therefore, is not a matter of equality, but one of order. This can be seen, for instance, in Mascall’s discussion of 1 Cor. 11:3.

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[W]e are told that the head of the woman is man, and the head of every man is Christ, and the head of Christ is God. This does not, of course, mean that in all three cases headship is exercised in precisely the same way; to use the technical terms, ‘headship’ is an analogical and not a univocal concept. But neither is it purely equivocal, or there would be no force in making the comparison. And if the headship of God over Christ is the archetype of both Christ’s headship over the man and the man’s headship over the woman, no implication of servile subjection is possible. The fundamental relation of Christ to the Father is not one of inferiority but of filiality and derived equality. The fundamental relation of the Christian man to Christ is not one of inferiority but of membership and reception of communicated sonship. And behind St Paul’s thought about the man and the woman we must surely see the story of the creation of Eve from the side of Adam, in which the fundamental relation is not one of inferiority but of mutual perfection and of derived partnership: “I will make him a help meet for him.” [Gen. 2:18]

The thought is carried even further in the magnificent sixth chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians, in which husbands are exhorted to love their wives with that same self-giving love with which Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it. Throughout, superordination is manifested not in tyranny but in self-giving; subordination is manifested not in servility but in receptiveness and response. If women are incapable of receiving Holy Orders, it cannot be just because they are, in the vulgar sense of the word, subordinate to men, but because of the particular way in which masculinity and femininity are involved in the whole dispensation of 3 redemption.

The appeal to tradition, however, concerns not just Scripture, but the question, how has Scripture been received in the Church? The Church, having received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, was to be guided ‘into all truth;’ therefore its consistent practice is a testimony to the right interpretation and application of Scripture. So, beginning with Christ’s calling of the apostles, the traditionalist position points to an unbroken tradition of all-male clergy over the first 1900-plus years of the Church.4 This is not to say that female priests were unheard of: they did emerge from time to time in heretical sects such as Montanism (which pretended the authority of prophecy to overturn Scripture and the received order of the Church) and the various branches of Gnosticism (which denied the value of the body in favor of a purely ‘spiritual’ religion).5 Mainstream orthodox Christianity, however, rejected the practice - not just by appeal to commonly held assumptions, but by appealing to the example of Christ and the teaching of Paul.6 The ordination of women as presbyters or bishops was not something that had been received from Christ and the apostles. Thus, Consecrated Women? suggests that there has in fact already been a ‘reception process’ for the ordination of women - in the strict sense, a period of testing to see whether the whole Church would recognize the practice as

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7 consistent with the received deposit of faith - and that it has been rejected.

The question of ‘reception,’ however, raises matters of ecumenism. Since the 1980s, Anglicans have frequently framed the debate over women’s ordination as a ‘reception process,’ in which Anglicans are presumably leading the way with regard to a new practice which will eventually be accepted by the wider Church.8 Anglicans have never claimed the ministry to be exclusively their own. Cranmer’s preface to the ordinal, rather than establishing a new , expresses the desire that the ‘orders of ministers’ which have been ‘in Christ’s Church’ ‘from the apostles’ time’ ‘be continued … in the Church of England.’ By definition, then, our ministry is shared with others who likewise ‘continue’ the same orders in their churches. ‘Reception,’ therefore, cannot be merely an inter-Anglican process - it must include the other churches who share the three-fold order of ministry. Yet these churches are for the most part opposed to the ordination of women; and the Roman Catholic Church has ruled (and deemed the judgment infallible) that the example of Christ and the tradition of the Church prohibit the ordination of women to the priesthood. Any such ecumenical consent to the ordination of women would therefore seem to be not only unlikely, but definitively impossible. Traditionalists point out that, in this context, reception has become essentially an inter-Anglican affair (sometimes, cynically, a matter of waiting for traditionalism to die out); it is not in reality leadership of the wider Church, but a unilateral change to the ministry. This effectively makes a lie of Cranmer’s assertion that Anglican orders are not merely our own but the continuation in Anglicanism of the orders of the Church Catholic.

There remains, however, the consideration of tradition’s other aspect - not continuity, but criticism. From the traditional side of the argument, the question might be stated, if women’s ordination was not received from Christ, where then does it come from? Unanimously, traditionalists point to the surrounding culture. Kirk (in particular) recounts the importance of maintaining cultural relevance in the debates leading up to the ordination of women in the Church of England; he also goes deeper than most, tracing the lineage of the case for women’s ordination, through feminism more generally, to Enlightenment principles which were originally articulated in explicit opposition to Christianity.9 Other traditionalist accounts do not deal as much with the historical lineage of present ideas, but it is widely noted that women’s ordination is (at the very least) ‘in step’ with cultural changes of the twentieth century - an observation coupled with the question of whether we are indeed so much more enlightened now than in ages past. In particular, traditionalists point to human sexual difference as a fundamental reality of creation - which is redeemed, not removed, in Christ’s work of salvation. As Bridge notes, this view of humanity as inherently sexual is fundamentally opposed to the essentially neuter vision of humanity (i.e. the interchangeability rather than the fundamental difference and complementarity-within- equality of the sexes) which undergirds the arguments for both women’s ordination and same-sex marriage.10 In a similar vein, Lewis draws a distinction between professional work which is ‘artificial’ and concerned primarily with ‘doing the job,’ and roles which are more

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human, such as courtship and dancing, which emphasize interpersonal (and gendered) relationality: the life of the Church, for Lewis, is the most human thing of all.

The symbolism of the priesthood

This emphasis on the Church’s life as human and relational, points towards a second area of argument regarding the ordination of women - specifically, the symbolic nature of the priesthood. It should be noted, this is not generally presented as an argument in its own right against the ordination of women, but rather as a supporting argument to the principal argument from Scripture and tradition. If Christ’s example in choosing the twelve sets precedent for the Church’s practice of ordination, the male priesthood and episcopate are therefore to be understood as reflecting the will of God; but God’s will is not arbitrary. Thus, there is a presumption that the tradition has an underlying rationale to its practice, even if that reason has not been teased out until the controversy of the past few decades. Traditionalist Anglo-Catholics, together with Roman Catholics and the Orthodox, reject out of hand any supposed inferiority of women, and therefore have generally turned to the question of what is communicated symbolically by the sex of the priest. To repeat Mascall’s words, the reason for the tradition of the all-male priesthood must lie in ‘the particular way 11 in which masculinity and femininity are involved in the whole dispensation of redemption.’

The most prominent aspect of this discussion (particularly because of the emphasis given to it in the declaration Inter insigniores of Pope Paul VI) is the appeal to the priest as standing in persona Christi. This concept is not exclusively symbolic in its origin (in Andrewes, for instance, it is primarily a matter of the priest’s authority to act on Christ’s behalf), but it has always been susceptible to a symbolic interpretation - a symbolic connection between the priest (or bishop) and Christ has been noted as early as ca. 100 A.D., in the letters of Ignatius and Clement. This long tradition of seeing the priest as a symbol of Christ has thus been brought to bear on the question of whether or not women can be ordained.

The argument from the priest’s symbolic representation of Christ begins with the incarnation. In the act of creation, God made humanity male and female. Christ, therefore, becoming fully human in the incarnation, necessarily had to become incarnate either as a male or a female—and did in fact become incarnate as a man. Had he taken on an abstract humanity which reflected neither sex (or both), he would not in fact have been fully and perfectly human, in accordance with the understanding of humanity set out in Genesis 1-2. Moreover, the range of types and prophecies which he fulfilled were a set of masculine images - the new Adam, the son of David, the great High Priest, the sacrificial victim, and the bridegroom, among others. Indeed, Genesis 3:15 promises a male descendant who will bruise the serpent’s head. That Christ became human as a man is therefore a necessary aspect of his incarnation.

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The priest, as the long tradition of the Church’s teaching indicates, functions as a symbol of Christ. Generally speaking, symbols shape our understanding of that which they represent. The question, then, with regard to the question of women’s ordination, is what the biological sex of the priest suggests about Jesus. Jesus was incarnate as a man, and the ordination of men is clearly consistent with this. Traditionalists argue, however, that to have a woman as a symbol of Christ suggests a female Christ; a mixed-sex priesthood taken as a whole suggests a Christ who is either neuter or hermaphroditic. Women’s ordination therefore presents a symbol that is at odds with the doctrine of the incarnation.

The priest’s representation of Christ, however, is not the only direction symbolic arguments can take. The older argument - advanced first by C.S. Lewis in the 1940s - concerns the priest as a symbol of the Father (also an ancient tradition in the Church). While it is granted that God is beyond human definition and biological sex, he has nonetheless consistently revealed himself under masculine language; Christ himself addresses God as ‘Father.’ A male priest naturally fits with the masculine symbolism under which God has chosen to reveal himself, but a female priest complicates this symbolism. Consequently, in Lewis’s oft-cited argument, to ordain women to the priesthood entails (not perhaps logically, but as a matter of consistency within the system of symbols by which we think of God) that we pray to God as ‘Our Mother, who art in heaven.’12 Female priests are thus held to be suggestive of a mother goddess, rather than God the Father.13

Critical Arguments

Scripture and Tradition

Proponents of the ordination of women who work within a more-or-less ‘catholic’ framework tend to recognize the weight of the Church’s tradition and the symbolic nature of the priesthood. However, they are critical of the traditionalist argument in a number of ways. Thus, with regard to the Church’s tradition, they reject appeals to the example of Christ as inappropriate: the twelve were in fact men - a necessity of their role as the symbolic ‘patriarchs’ of the new Israel, as traditionalists also recognize - but it was equally necessary to that symbolism that they were Jewish. This has not, however, precluded the Church from ordaining Gentiles!14 Moreover, long practice is not always correct. It took eighteen centuries for the Church to act decisively against slavery; why should it not take nineteen for the Church to realize the implications of the Gospel with regard to gender equality? Indeed, until the twentieth century, the ‘traditional’ explanation for the prohibition on women’s ordination was that women were supposedly inferior to men - in Loades’s memorable phrase, that women were ‘intermittently bleeding half-wits.’15 Since this view is no longer accepted, even among ‘traditional’ Christians, it is not clear that the position which it

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supported can continue to stand.

Opponents of the traditional view therefore apply the critical use of tradition to the past, whereas traditionalists appeal primarily to continuity. In like fashion, they argue for continuity with Scriptural ideas in more recent attitudes, whereas traditionalists apply criticism. Thus, they emphasize the theological equality given to women in the New Testament, and point out the role of women as witnesses of the resurrection (implicitly alluding to the qualifications of an apostle in Acts 1:21). The ordination of women, therefore, is the outworking over time of these elements which were received in the New Testament. Indeed, though the Church’s practice of ordaining only men to the priesthood is consistent, Beattie points out a line of devotional reflection in Roman Catholicism (suppressed by the Vatican, however, in the early twentieth century) attributing a priestly 16 role to Mary in offering her Son to God and to the world.

With regard to ecumenism, critics of the traditional position point out that it matters very much with whom one intends to pursue ecumenism: with many of what are known in the United States as the ‘mainline’ denominations, prohibition against the ordination of women would prove to be as much an obstacle to ecumenism as allowing it would be with more traditional denominations. Moreover, at least with regard to Rome, Anglican orders as a whole have been ruled invalid since the 1890s, well before the ordination of women was a concern. Whatever Anglicans may claim, as long as Apostolicae curae remains its official 17 position, the Roman Church does not see the two churches as sharing the same ministry.

On the other hand, supporters of women’s ordination point out repeatedly the fact that women can do the job. Indeed, ordaining women has numerous practical benefits. Many women exercise ministries of spiritual advice and counsel; why bar them from also offering absolution?18 One parish (discussed by Beattie) saw a marked increase in single mothers bringing their children for baptism under a female priest; this suggests that whereas an exclusively male clergy can be alienating to some women, ordaining women can create a ‘safe space’ for some of the more vulnerable members of society.19 Moreover, it does not help in bringing people into the Church when the Church’s values are out of step with society: Beattie therefore pointedly accuses the Roman hierarchy of ‘bringing the Church into disrepute and damaging its credibility for an increasing number of modern believers.’20

The symbolism of the priesthood

For the most part, ‘catholic’ proponents of the ordination of women recognize the importance of a symbolic dimension to the ordained ministry. However, they are adamantly opposed to the traditionalist emphasis on the maleness of Christ in the incarnation. Galatians 3:28 is frequently cited, as is the saying, ‘what is not assumed is not saved.’21 As Beattie outlines the argument, so long as women were seen as inherently flawed, it was

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natural that Christ as the ‘perfect human’ should be male; but with the recognition of women’s equality in society, to insist on the maleness of Christ as an essential part of the incarnation effectively excludes women from salvation. If Christ only assumed male humanity, female humanity would be unredeemed.22 Since the old appeal to the inferiority of women is no longer maintained, even by traditionalists, the traditionalist appeal to symbolism is generally cast as a defensive irrationality of men who are afraid of losing their 23 power, even though the intellectual foundations of patriarchy have been removed.

Though proponents of women’s ordination make a consistent argument against the traditional position, there is no one approach to a positive view of the priesthood’s symbolism. Responding to Lewis’s description of human masculinity as a ‘uniform’ more or less inadequately worn by all men except Christ, Loades asks whether biological sex is aptly described as a ‘uniform,’ and whether the ‘uniform’ in the case of the priesthood might not be the sacrament of order itself.24 That is to say, why must the role of a priest in symbolizing Christ depend on biological sex, rather than on ordination? Alternatively, Ware has noted that in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy the consecration of the eucharistic elements is not through the action of Christ at the words of institution (spoken by the priest) but through the descent of the Spirit in response to the prayer of the congregation (again, spoken by the priest).25 Taking up this line of thought, some have proposed that the priest be seen, not as in persona Christi, but as in persona ecclesiae - alleviating concerns about the sex of the celebrant, and indeed reinforcing a positive case for the ordination of women, given the femininity often attributed to the Church.26 In a more radical line of thought, Beattie proposes a Marian symbolism for female priests (based on the tradition noted above), as a complement to the Christological symbolism of male clergy. The most dramatic position is MacKinnon’s who 27 holds that women’s ordination ‘enlarges’ our understanding of Christ.

Less is said regarding the priest’s second symbolic role of representing God the Father. It is frequently noted that there are instances of feminine language referring to God in Scripture, and that therefore the use of exclusively male imagery for God is not required; nor (as Loades points out) does ordaining women in any way require a change in how we speak (or think) about God.28 On the other hand, another case study discussed by Beattie 29 argues that the ordination of women ‘creates space for the female … in imago Dei.’

Review of the Arguments

Having presented the two positions with their respective arguments on the role of tradition, and on the symbolic nature of the priesthood, the remaining task is to give an assessment of the argument. This will be done by examining the two major categories of the argument in three steps: first, by locating the principle points of divergence between the two perspectives; second, by evaluating the strength of the respective arguments on these points; and finally, by identifying some unanswered questions that emerge.

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Scripture and Tradition

The first observation which can be offered on the argument from Scripture and tradition is that the arguments of the two sides are mirror opposites: traditionalists insist on continuity with the past, and apply criticism to present attempts to alter it; their critics apply criticism to the past, and argue for continuity between modern developments and central concerns of the Gospel, which (it is claimed) have lain undeveloped until the present day. At a slightly lower level, it can further be noted that in fact the traditionalist side rejects the past reasoning against which their critics direct most of their animosity - that is, any supposition of the inequality of women. The debate with regard to the past, then, is whether the longstanding tradition of a male priesthood is a practice received from Christ, though unfortunately misunderstood for a long period of time (the traditionalist perspective); or whether it is the embodiment of a wrong view of women, which has now lost its intellectual grounding and which deserves to fall along with the ideas which supported it. Thus, the first root-level question is whether the male priesthood is a practice independent of ideas used to explain it, or whether it is the result of a certain set of ideas. Stated more generally, can a practice on its own be significant, or only as the expression of an idea?

This points to a second difference between the two positions. For traditionalists, what is at stake is a continuity of practice; their critics claim a (developing) continuity of idea. The traditionalist claim of continuity is straightforward. However, their critics claim is less so. First, critics of the traditional position claim to argue for ‘continuity’ of a sort, when in fact they are critiquing an opposed idea held over several centuries of intervening time; at best, their claim is not so much continuity as reclamation. And it is fairly drastic in its scope: the period from which a true vision of gender and the ministry is to be reclaimed comprises most of the Church’s history, including several formative centuries. Admittedly, rejecting one aspect of the patristic understanding of the Church need not entail rejecting other theological developments of the period. Still, the question remains: can such a rejection really allow for ‘continuity’ of any sort?

Proponents of women’s ordination do claim, however, to be in ‘continuity’ through a process of development with ideas of the equality of women found in Scripture - Jesus’ equal treatment of various women, his appearing first to women after the Resurrection, and Paul’s attitudes, particularly as reflected in Gal. 3:28 (‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’). Additionally, they claim to be working out the implications of the patristic Christological axiom, ‘What is not assumed is not saved.’ There is thus a claim of logical (if not historical) continuity with elements in the past and in . However, these points are not beyond rebuttal. Kirk has made a compelling argument that while both Jesus and Paul showed considerable respect to women, neither showed any interest in upending the social

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order (in Paul’s case, he makes this argument with regard to each of the pairs in Gal. 3:28); similarly, the early fathers who showed such a concern for Jesus’ full humanity never drew the conclusion from it that women should be ordained.30 Moreover, traditionalists generally respond that both the passage from Galatians and the axiom about the incarnation are statements about salvation, not order. Finally, it may be observed that while there is a recognizable continuity between the meaning attributed to these passages and the position held by supporters of women’s ordination, Jesus’ choice of twelve male apostles, Paul’s teaching on the role of women in the Church, and the lack of any evidence for women’s ordination in the early centuries of the Church all seem for the most part to be established facts. This raises the concern that the interpretation given to these passages risks setting the teaching of Jesus and Paul against their practice. The critical position, therefore, faces two questions about its asserted continuity. First, is it fair to claim continuity, in light of the long period between the New Testament and the twentieth century in which no version of their position was held? And second, are their positions actually continuous with the Scriptures they cite, or are these passages wrongly applied?

It was also noted, however, that the notion of tradition as continuity also involves an ecumenical aspect - continuity, as it were, across the whole Church Catholic in the present, as well as continuity with the past. Supporters of women’s ordination, as we have noted, observe that the bearing of ecumenism on this subject depends very much on whom you wish to have ecumenical relations with. This is indeed pertinent; but it does not quite address the traditionalist concern in this matter. Ecumenical relations are important to anyone who takes seriously Christ’s wish, ‘that they all may be one;’ and traditional Anglo-Catholics are naturally drawn to value relationships with denominations which share similar views on the Church, the ministry, and the sacraments (namely, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Old Catholics). But the primary ecumenical concern of traditionalists is not with ecumenical relationship but with ecumenical consent (sometimes referred to as ‘catholic consent’). Anglicanism is not its own faith, but an expression of the ‘faith once delivered;’ it is not its own Church, but part of the Church Catholic. This reality is embodied in the ordained ministry. Anglican orders are not our own orders, but those of the wider Church; yet if they do not belong to us, how can we change our ordination practices without wider consent? Despite Anglican claims of , however, we do have deep disagreements with these churches, which are not just political but theological; and indeed, in the case of Rome (as critics have noted), which have led to the rejection of Anglican claims to share a common order. If we do not defer to these other Churches on these other points of theology, why should we do so here? Traditionalists might respond, that points of interpretation differ from points of practice: there may be differing views on the Eucharist, for instance, but the same thing is done. This is, however, a judgment call. What weight should be given to the understanding of other churches with regard to women’s ordination?

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Tradition, however, also has a critical aspect. In this regard, proponents of women’s ordination criticize past belief and its associated practice; traditionalists criticize the present. Here the positions are reversed: the criticisms made of past negative attitudes towards women are fairly straightforward, and are conceded even by traditionalists themselves. The traditionalist position, however, seems to be set on supporting the equality of women in word, while simultaneously rejecting one application of it in practice - an apparent contradiction. Traditionalists respond by emphasizing that equality does not entail interchangeability. This is where Lewis’s contrast between the ‘artificial’ and the ‘human’ comes into play, providing a rubric for where the sexes may be interchangeable (since in some aspects of life equality obviously entails that they are, e.g. business). This contrast has some appeal beyond the question who might be ordained: if marriage is simply a matter of romantic attraction, emotional support, and perhaps ‘compatibility,’ the qualifications must be simply that those practical criteria are met - the candidate must be able to ‘do the job,’ regardless of biological sex. If, on the other hand, there is something more to it (however this ‘something’ might elude definition), who is involved, including their biological sex, is as important as what they do. It is on this principle that the parallel is often drawn between same-sex marriage and women’s ordination - not as if they were moral equivalents, but because the same principle of interchangeability is operative in both. However, it should be acknowledged that the claim that ordination is something ‘human’ rather than ‘artificial’ (as Lewis uses the terms) often clashes with experience. Though theological arguments can be made to the contrary, the Church is for most people less like a family than it is a provider of pastoral services wedded to a hierarchical bureaucracy, in both respects seemingly ‘artificial.’ There are pastoral and administrative tasks to be done; women can do the job, and to exclude them from a large part of this hierarchy is, in fact, to make them inferior. It therefore needs to be asked, do traditionalists have sufficient grounds for counting marriage and the family as the same kind of thing, where equality does not entail interchangeability? And if they do, what needs to change for the Church’s actual daily life to reflect this? If traditionalists are in fact committee- d to the equality of women, how is this to be reflected in the life of the Church including its structures of authority and its decision-making bodies?

Beneath the whole question of tradition, however, lies the fundamental question: do we learn from the past in order to correct the present; or learn from the present in order to correct what has been inherited from the past? Inevitably, we must do both; but the difference as to which is primary should not be mistaken as simply a matter of personal preference. It is, rather, a difference of attitude as to the role of theology. For Mascall, on the traditional side, ‘Christian theology advances by trying to penetrate more fully than before into the theological meaning of the Church’s life and practice, rather than by discarding as trivial those elements of them which it has not so far thought out.’31 For Loades, however, ‘revelation is an ongoing dialogue between God and humanity, developed in a living tradition involving imagination and social growth, which graciously invites our response in humanly inclusive ways, each of which acts as a corrective to the other.’32 Traditionalists hold that,

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though the old explanation based on women’s inequality is obviously inadequate, we have received a clear example from Christ, and a clear practice throughout the tradition, which it is our job not to change but to seek to understand more deeply. Their critics, however, believe that those elements of the tradition—not just beliefs, but practices—which have supported inequality demand critique and correction; and this criticism is, in fact, a legitimate expression of continuity with the tradition. The question, then is this: Is it the Church’s task to keep the practices which we have delivered, to live within them, and to expand our understanding of them; or is it to participate in an ongoing process of growth which, though it must always be connected to the central reality of Christ, may lead beyond the old ways, or even to rejecting them?

The symbolism of the Priesthood

Turning then to the arguments from the symbolism of the priesthood, it is first worthwhile noting that both sides largely agree that there is a symbolic aspect of the priesthood which is at stake in the ordination of women. The issues here are two-fold. (1) Does the traditionalist position represent Christ in a way that effectively excludes half of humanity from salvation? And (2) does the symbolism of women’s ordination effectively undermine orthodox belief in the incarnation, and in the nature of God as he has revealed himself?

For supporters of women’s ordination, the traditionalist emphasis on Christ’s incarnation as a man cuts against the principle, ‘what is not assumed is not saved.’ If Christ became a man, rather than human, only male humanity was assumed and therefore saved; women are left out. Rather, they would insist that Christ became human, and that as both men and women are human, both men and women can adequately represent Christ. Leaving aside for now the propriety (or not) of an ordained woman as a symbol of Christ, it is worthwhile to clarify the traditionalist position.

The traditionalist position is that Christ’s incarnation as a human necessarily involved his being incarnate as a man. They do not separate humanity into two natures, a ‘female human nature’ and a ‘male human nature.’33 Humanity shares (as in classical ) one human nature. It is this human nature which Christ took, and it is the whole human nature which is redeemed. However, human nature occurs in two kinds, male and female, such that a full and perfect expression of this nature is necessarily in one of the two kinds. To be human is, certain anomalies notwithstanding, to be either male or female. This can, in fact, help elucidate why traditionalists seem generally unconcerned by the criticism that Jesus was not only male but Jewish. Race and ethnicity are features of human society - somewhat subjective and variable ones, at that - not fundamental and universally experienced characteristics of human nature.34 To call sexual differentiation a fundamental characteristic of human nature, however, does not entail that there are two distinct humanities. The

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traditionalist emphasis on the maleness of Jesus, therefore, does not result, as their critics claim, in the exclusion of women from salvation. (Part of the confusion on this point, however, is due to a lack of work done on this aspect of theological anthropology, as Loades 35 is keen to point out).

There remains, then, the question of what effects the ordination of women has on the symbolism of the priesthood. Several proposals from its proponents can be ruled out in short order. Assertions as to the way in which women’s ordination can ‘enlarge’ our understanding of God seem for the most part to run blithely into the teeth of the traditionalist argument: if an all- male priesthood inadequately represents God, it is difficult to see how a male Christ can be any more adequate (cf. John 1:18). That Christ was male is an inescapable fact of the incarnation; and while there are biblical instances of feminine imagery referring to God, they are quite rare, and provide insufficient grounds for altering the received practice of referring to God in the masculine.36 It may be axiomatically true that our understanding of Christ and of God is inadequate; it is doubtful, however, whether the particular direction of which these voices propose for expansion would be congenial to the theological disposition of the Anglican Church in North America.

Beattie’s proposal of a Marian symbolism for the priesthood avoids such problems, but faces others which also remove it from serious consideration. Principally, it relies on notions which have been suppressed within the Roman Catholic Church (her own tradition); and though her ideas have found some traction among sympathetic Anglicans, it is doubtful that such an approach would gain ground in Anglicanism broadly considered, given that tradition’s historically protestant emphasis on the sole priesthood of Christ.

There remain, then, two proposals which are not inherently problematic. The first of these is the understanding of the priest as in persona ecclesiae, based on the Orthodox understanding of the eucharistic consecration as taking place in response to the prayer of the congregation, offered by the priest. This is generally stated in opposition to a Western understanding of the priest as in persona Christi, effecting the consecration by reciting (on Christ’s behalf, or as Christ’s agent) the words of institution. The difficulty in this position is that it seems to misunderstand the meaning of the priest’s role in persona Christi. Specifically, the priest is in persona Christi not only in the Eucharist, but as a result of his role in the whole life of the congregation; the Eucharist is a focal point in which this is especially apparent, but not an isolated case. This broad understanding of the minister’s role in the community is clearly the concern, for instance, in Inter insigniores, and is articulated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church as in persona Christi capitis, ‘in the person of Christ the head.’37 That is, the priest’s ministry is to lead the congregation - particularly, but not exclusively, in the Eucharist—on behalf of Christ who is head of the whole body. This is, it may be noted, very much consistent with the earlier Anglican tradition discussed previously, which emphasized the priest’s ministry in persona Christi more in the pastoral context of absolution than in the

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liturgical context of the Eucharist, and with the Lux Mundi school which emphasized that the priesthood of Christ is shared by the Church and expressed on the Church’s behalf by the ministerial priesthood. However, this raises the question for those who hold that the priest acts in persona ecclesiae, whether the priest can act on behalf of the Church without also acting on behalf of Christ, the head of the Church. It is doubtful whether the Church can be considered apart from its , and so it seems that envisioning the priest as in persona ecclesiae does not, in the end, evade the questions surrounding the priest’s function in persona Christi.

The remaining question, however, is whether women’s ordination necessarily entails a change to the symbolic meaning of the priesthood. Is it not more appropriate, to revisit Loades’s questions, for Christological symbolism to lie in the office (rather than the person or biological sex) of the priest? And why should ordaining women necessarily imply addressing God as ‘Our Mother?’ Or, to combine both questions into one, why must the ordination of women change the symbolism of the priesthood in the ways which traditionalists claim? There is no easy answer. A traditionalist could reply, it is not so easy in matters of symbolism to sever the connection between an office and the person who holds it, which is true. On the other hand, a critic might point out that the Christian faith is made up of doctrines or hermeneutical rules which limit legitimate interpretation on a range of subjects, and have done so successfully almost from the beginning, which is also true. In the end, it is an open question whether the connection or the limitation would prove a more resilient influence on the symbolism of the priesthood. Symbolism, after all, is a matter of psychology, association, and interpretation, rather than of logical consequence. It is worth remembering the stakes in this debate, however: traditionalists need only provide a plausible rationale to accompany their main argument from tradition; their critics, however, need to deflect the charge of teaching error. An indefinite conclusion on this point is unsatisfactory for both sides, but likely weighs in favor of the traditionalist.

Conclusion

Traditionalist Anglo-Catholicism claims that the practice of ordaining only men to the priesthood is established on the precedent of Christ, upheld by Scripture, and received through an unbroken tradition in the Church down the centuries. The ordination of women, therefore, is not to be permitted. It is this appeal to tradition which is the primary argument against the ordination of women; but unless God is thought to be arbitrary, the received practice implicitly asks for some rationale. Traditionalists insist firmly on the equality of women, and reject old explanations of this practice which rooted it in inequality. Therefore, as a secondary argument in explanation of the first, they turn to the question of how the biological sex of the celebrant might affect the symbolism associating the priest with both Christ and the Father. Because Christ took humanity as a man, and because God chose to

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reveal himself under predominantly masculine language, mixing the female sex with a set of symbols referring to both is, effectively, a form of false teaching.

The value placed on continuity and symbolism, however, is not unique to the traditionalist position. Some who share these overarching commitments have been critical of the traditionalist argument. They maintain, instead, that the long tradition of a male priesthood is a human imposition of patriarchy, and that true continuity with the teachings of the New Testament lies in upholding the full equality of women, including their ordination to the priesthood. With regard to symbolism, they argue that making Christ’s biological sex an essential feature of the incarnation effectively cuts women off from salvation, and offer a number of alternatives.

When the two positions are considered together, however, a number of questions emerge. On the one hand, advocates of women’s ordination need to answer, just what kind of continuity is it that skips over ninety percent of the time between source and fulfilment— particularly when that time is measured not in days or years but in centuries? On the other hand, while the traditionalist vision of a differentiated equality of the sexes might work well enough within an organic understanding of the Church, the Church presents itself in fact as an institution rather than a family. If their emphasis on the equality of the sexes is not mere lip-service, then, they are faced with the question, what can be done either to make the church less institutional in its everyday life, to reflect differentiated equality in the decision making processes of the Church, or both?

Beyond these difficulties for both sides, however, there are also questions of a broader nature regarding the outlook of the Church:

• To what extent do theological ideas interpret practices; and to what extent do the Church’s practices reflect ideas? In the matter of women’s ordination, should the longstanding practice determine our thinking, or does it depend upon the ideas that have supported it?

• What weight should be given to the understanding of other Churches with regard to women’s ordination? Do Anglicans, on our own, have the authority to change ordination practices in a way that is not accepted by other Churches which share our form of ordained ministry?

• What should be the Church’s fundamental attitude towards its received practices—one of preservation and understanding, or one of renovation and correction? Where is the appropriate balance between learning from the past and learning from the present?

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• Is the ordained ministry primarily a job with various pastoral and administrative duties to perform, or a personal role within a set of relationships in the Church?

• Is a hermeneutical limit likely to be effective in preventing wrong symbolic interpretations of women’s ordination? Or does the need for such a limit indicate that this change should be avoided in the first place?

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Women’s Ordination and the Character of the Ministry

As noted at the beginning of this paper, the third feature of the Anglo-Catholic understanding of Holy Orders - the mark or ‘character’ of the ministry - has been omitted from the main discussion, as it does not bear on the question of whether or not to ordain women. It does affect, however, the way that many traditionalist Anglo-Catholics understand the ministry of ordained women. This understanding draws on the technical requirements for the validity of the sacrament. These are often summed up as form, matter and intent; but also include, in a full account, a valid minister and subject. In ordination, the form, matter, and intent are the prayer of ordination, the laying on of hands, and the intent to confer Holy Orders; the valid minister is a bishop in the apostolic succession. However, because the witness of Scripture and Tradition do not provide for the ordination of women, a female ordinand is seen as an invalid subject. The ordination itself is therefore seen as invalid, and the mark or ‘character’ of Holy Orders is not imparted. The pastoral significance of this is that several sacraments (most notably the Eucharist and absolution) require a validly ordained priest as the minister. This leads to the painful conclusion that when these sacraments are administered by an ordained woman, they are invalid: there is no covenantal assurance of God’s grace, and (at worst) there is perhaps no sacramental grace given at all.38 Given the potentially drastic consequences, traditionalists generally insist on a standard of evidence in favor of women’s ordination which is ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’

While this is, for traditionalists, a consequence of the argument against the ordination of women, a few of their critics have attacked it as a part of their counter-argument. The most developed argument on this point belongs to MacKinnon, who argues that the traditionalist position is ‘distorted, even heretically innovative.’39 For MacKinnon, the traditionalist’s argument from symbolism entails ‘that Christ’s real presence is to be sought neither in the action nor in the consecrated elements, but in the person of the priest;’ rather, ‘[t]he Eucharist is not a Passion play in which the part of Jesus would need to be played by a male.’40 Traditional sacramental theology has emphasized that neither the moral state nor even the beliefs of the minister affect the validity of the sacraments (the principle that validity is ex opere operato, held by the Church since the Donatist controversy and upheld in Article 26); the traditionalist position, he believes, makes the biological sex of the celebrant a 41 qualification of sacramental validity in a way that violates this consensus.

MacKinnon’s argument involves several misunderstandings, and is therefore not successful. It is nonetheless useful for clearing up these points of potential confusion, which largely involve the argument from symbolism discussed above. First, while the question of what makes a eucharistic celebrant an appropriate symbol of Christ was not asked until the mid 20th century, this symbolism in itself has been recognized in the Church for at least nineteen centuries. Needless to say, never in that time has the recognition of the celebrant as a symbol

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of Christ resulted in anyone viewing the celebrant (instead of the consecrated elements) as the focal point of the eucharistic presence; the claim that traditionalists now effectively hold this view is simply bizarre.

Second, the traditionalist concern for symbolism should not be confused with reenactment. This confusion accounts, at least in part, for the notion that the eucharistic presence has been transferred to the celebrant; MacKinnon states that the ‘emphasis has shifted altogether from the bread and wine,’ to the celebrant’s ability ‘to achieve a mimésis of Christ’s sacrifice.’ However, a symbol, in the sense that is concerned here, is neither a reenactment or direct representation, nor an arbitrary label attached to an otherwise unrelated image. Rather it is (Merriam-Webster) ‘something that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship, association, convention, or accidental resemblance.’ So, both by the proximity of the Last Supper to the Passion, and through the direct meaning of the words of institution, the Eucharist is a symbol of Christ’s death; taken in the context of the biblical imagery of the feast, it is also a symbol of the heavenly banquet. Christ is the self-offered sacrifice of the cross; but also the ceremonial leader at the last supper, the host of the heavenly feast, and the great high Priest who leads the prayers and worship of the redeemed. The eucharistic celebrant, in virtue of being the ritual ‘host’ of the sacramental meal as well as the leader of the congregation’s worship, stands in a role analogous to that of Christ in these respects (not with regard to Christ as victim), and so is a symbol of Christ ‘by reason of relationship’ and ‘association.’ The traditionalist claim is that the ordination of women to the priesthood brings into this network of associations a new element—the female sex—that risks introducing confusion into the wider system of symbolic connections. Importantly, however, it is not principally a matter of ‘resemblance,’ and the priest is not seen as being in any way a reenactor or representative of Christ’s self-offering; indeed, he is not generally seen even as replicating the Last Supper - the Eucharist is a remembrance and a participation, but not a reenactment.

Finally, MacKinnon’s charge that traditionalist concerns about the sex of the celebrant violate the principle ex opere operato is based on a sadly muddled interpretation of the traditionalist position: in his argument, traditionalists hold that:

(a) a woman cannot validly celebrate the Eucharist due to her inability to symbolize Christ; therefore (b) women cannot be ordained.

On the contrary, however, traditionalists actually hold that

(a) a woman cannot be ordained due to her inability to symbolize Christ; therefore 42 (b) women cannot celebrate the Eucharist.

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With cause (women cannot be ordained) and effect (women cannot celebrate the Eucharist) in proper order, the charge that traditionalists are violating long-held principles of sacramental theology is obviated. (To use the Articles of Religion as landmarks, traditionalist views about the ministry of ordained women have more to do with Article 23 than with Article 26).

MacKinnon’s argument is framed as a response to the traditionalists’ argument from symbolism; the final point of our analysis showed, however, that what is involved in the ability of a woman priest to celebrate a valid Eucharist is not any argument for or against ordination, but (in the most direct sense) whether or not the ordination ‘takes.’ The proper inquiry on this point, then, is indicated by Loades, who notes that of the seven sacraments, ordination is the only one in which grace is held by some to ‘slither off’ half the potential recipients; and this is, in itself, a curiosity which demands explanation.43 This question is less flamboyant than MacKinnon’s criticism, but also more useful in sorting out the traditionalist concern with regard to the ‘mark’ of ordination. A possible clarification could be drawn from Andrewes’s distinction, that ordination does not confer gratia gratum faciens (saving or sanctifying grace) but rather confers something akin to gratia gratis data (grace for a particular ministry). The proper comparison, with regard to the kind of grace in question, lies more with the charismatic gifts than with the other sacraments. This is some help - there is no expectation that charismatic gifts will be uniformly or universally received, even by those who seek them out. However, there are two new questions that result. First, the giving or not of charismatic ‘graces’ may relate to any number of things, according to God’s wisdom; but it would be very odd indeed for someone to propose that certain gifts were given only to men. Second - the particular point which Loades has in view - charismatic graces are not conferred by a sacrament, whereas ordination is; and a sacrament is generally held to be a ‘sure’ and ‘effectual’ means of conveying the grace in question (see Article 25). With regard to the first point, it is worth recalling that Andrewes sees the grace of ordination as specifically gratia gratis data ‘of the office.’ The distinguishing feature, then, in why the graces of ordination might or might not be imparted lies in the question, who may rightly hold the office? And with regard to the second question, it may be noted that sacraments do not give grace in a merely mechanical fashion - a willfully impenitent recipient of Baptism or the Eucharist, for instance, is not held to receive the grace of the sacrament, regardless of whatever else may be involved. It comes back to the matter of who may rightly receive the sacrament. And so, in the end, answering Loades’ question demonstrates that questions about the grace of ordination ultimately point back to the central discussion of this paper - whether or not women can be ordained.

However, raising the question from the angle of whether or not the grace of ordination is imparted raises an important point. There is, on the one hand, the claim that the Church cannot ordain women, and on the other, the claim that the Church should do so. What can easily be missed, however, in the argument between these two positions, is that

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there are, in fact, two questions: can the Church, and should the Church ordain women? The position under discussion so far in this appendix is that the Church cannot and should not; the position of those who support women’s ordination is that it can and should. Presumably, anyone who believes that the Church should but cannot is not within the Church—or will not be for long. There remains, however, the position which holds that the Church can, but should not. This is not discussed much in the literature surrounding women’s ordination, although it is presumably the unspoken position of those who sympathize, in whole or in part, with traditionalist arguments against the ordination of women, but who are content to get along in practical terms, including the recognition of sacramental ministry, with women who have been ordained. There are, however, several possible grounds for holding this position:

1. As a question of interpretation, it could be held that with (arguably) no clear prohibition in Scripture, the Church has authority to ordain women; but given Scriptural precedent to the contrary and the weight of tradition, this should not be done without grave necessity.

2. For those with whom ecumenical consent weighs heavily, it might be concluded (on whatever grounds) that the Church as a whole might be able to ordain women, but that particular Churches do not have authority to do so without prior consensus on the part of the whole Church.

3. Those who are concerned for the standard of proof might accept female clergy as validly ordained if they believe there is a ‘preponderance of the evidence’ in favor of women’s ordination, but still believe that the Church should not ordain women if this evidence is not ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’

4. Finally, an individual might differ in their views as to the requirements for validity, and so consider that validity is not an issue with regard to women who were ordained in good faith; even if they believe that on the basis of Scripture and tradition (or on some other grounds) the Church does not have the authority to allow this.

There are therefore a number of grounds (which are not mutually exclusive) for concluding that women can be ordained, but should not; they reflect, more or less, various ways of being partially convinced by the traditionalist argument, while differing in one or more aspects. Like the claim that women cannot be validly ordained, this position also points back to the previous discussions, particularly those regarding Scripture and tradition. In most cases the reference is explicit. Even where it is not, however, the fact remains that questions about the ‘mark’ of ordination are, in themselves, concerned with the consequences of women’s ordination, whereas the prior discussions of tradition and symbolism bear directly on the question of practice itself.

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Endnotes

1 To be precise, the ordination of women to the episcopate has a much deeper effect regarding the recognition of orders and the interchangeability of the ministry, due to the role of the bishop in maintaining the unity of the Church, and in ordination. See Jonathan Baker, ed., Consecrated Women? (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2004) 8.3.3-4; but compare note 139 in Colin Podmore, ed., Fathers in God? (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2015), 163. 2 Quoted in Kallistos Ware, ‘Man, Woman, and the Priesthood of Christ,’ in Elizabeth Behr-Sigel and Kallistos Ware, the Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2002), 66 3 Mascall, ‘Women and the Priesthood of the Church’ (London: The Church Literature Association, 1960), 33- 34. 4 Among the roughly orthodox branches of Christianity, the first women were only ordained in the 1800s, and then only in denominations which did not claim to maintain the historic three-fold order of the Church’s ministry. Among denominations which do hold to this order, the ordination of women has emerged only in the second half of the 20th century. Among Anglicans, the first woman to be ordained was Florence Li Tim-Oi, ordained in Hong Kong as an emergency provision in 1944; but her ordination was condemned by the Lambeth Conference in 1948, and she was suspended from the priestly ministry until reinstated in 1970. 5 G.R. Bridge, Women and the Apostolic Ministry? (Parry Sound, ON: The Convent Society, 1997), 51-54. 6 See especially Sara Butler, The Catholic Priesthood and Women (Chicago: Hillenbrand Books, 2006), 60-66. 7 Consecrated Women, 8.4.7. 8 ‘Reception’ is the process—particularly important in Roman Catholicism and, after Vatican II, adopted in ecumenical discussion—by which a new doctrine or practice becomes formally accepted throughout the whole Church. The idea of a ‘reception process’ for women’s ordination was set forth by Archbishop Robert Runcie in his address to the 1988 Lambeth Conference. On its subsequent development, see Consecrated Women? 8.4.3. For a fuller discussion see the essays in Paul Avis, ed., Seeking the Truth of Change in the Church (London: T and T Clark, 2004), especially Paul Richardson, ‘Reception and Division in the Church,’ 123-138. 9 Geoffrey Kirk, Without Precedent (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2016), 1-8. 10 Bridge, 109-111. Cf. Mascall, Women and the Priesthood, 26-28; Women Priests? (London: The Church Literature Association, 1972), 11-13. 11 Mascall, ‘Women and the Priesthood,’ 34. 12 C.S. Lewis, ‘Priestesses in the Church?’ in Undeceptions (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1971), 193-194. 13 Several sources buttress this with appeals to history and anthropology—religions with an all-male priesthood have typically held a transcendent view of God, whereas religions with mixed-sex clergy have tended to be polytheistic or pantheistic. In particular, it is noted that the religion of Israel, with its all-male priesthood, emerged in a polytheistic environment dominated by the Mesopotamian/Canaanite mother goddess Ishtar (Ashtaroth); Christianity similarly emerged in a Mediterranean context in which the Roman- Egyptian mystery cult of Isis was particularly popular. While this approach is rejected by some (e.g. Richardson), it is however embraced by Beattie, who argues that paganism is now sufficiently distant that Christianity should overcome its inherited fear of the feminine. See the appendix by E.O. James in Mascall, ‘Women and the Priesthood,’ 36-39; Consecrated Women, 3.2.4, 7; Alan Richardson, ‘Women and the Priesthood,’ in Lambeth Essays on Ministry, ed. A.M. Ramsey (London: SPCK, 1969), 75-76; Tina Beattie, God’s Mother, Eve’s Advocate (London: Continuum, 2002), 202-204. 14 Richardson, 75-76; Donald MacKinnon, ‘The Icon Christi and Eucharistic Theology,’ Theology (March/April 1992): 110.

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15 Ann Loades, ‘Women in the Episcopate?’ Anvil 21 no. 2 (2004): 118. 16 Beattie, God’s Mother, 197-202. 17 Loades, ‘Women,’ 116. 18 MacKinnon, 111. 19 Beattie, ‘Vision and Vulnerability,’ in Exchanges of Grace (London: SCM Press, 2008), 239-242. 20 Beattie, God’s Mother, 202. 21 A paraphrase of Gregory of Nazianzus, ‘that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved,’ in ‘Letter to Cledonius the Priest Against Apollinarius,’ accessible online at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf207.iv.ii.iii.html. 22 Beattie, God’s Mother, 71. 23 Ibid., 202; MacKinnon, 112. 24 Loades, ‘On Gender,’ in The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis, ed. MacSwain and Ward (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 167. 25 Ware, 85-86. 26 E.g. by William Witt, who blogs at willgwitt.org. 27 MacKinnon, 113. 28 Loades, ‘On Gender,’ 166-167. 29 Quoted in Beattie, ‘Vision,’ 244. 30 Kirk, 48-65, 126-128. 31 Mascall, ‘Women and the Priesthood,’ 6. 32 Loades, ‘On Gender,’ 167. 33 Mascall does use such language, but it is for purposes of drawing a contrast between person and nature in the incarnation and not in the sense criticized here. It is however, language that is prone to misinterpretation and should be avoided. See Mascall, ‘Women and the Priesthood,’ 26. 34 serves to illustrate the point: the representation of Jesus and other biblical characters with local physical features is a long and time-honored tradition, in contrast to modern artistic expressions which have experimented with Jesus’ sex. Representations of Jesus as northern European, African, or Asian are far from being as provocative as Edwina Sandys’ Christa. 35 Loades, ‘Women in the Episcopate?’ 114, 119. 36 So, for instance, Isaiah 66:13 is the only passage which uses the word ‘mother’ in describing God, although a few other uses of maternal imagery can be found (e.g. Matt. 23:37). In contrast, maternal imagery is widely used of God’s people. 37 Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1142. Available online at http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P37.HTM. 38 For a nuanced statement, see ‘Communion, Catholicity and a Catholic Life’ (London: Forward in Faith, 2015), §2.1-2.9. Available online at http://www.sswsh.com/uploads/A_Catholic_Life_for_web.pdf. 39 MacKinnon, 112. 40 Ibid., 110. 41 Ibid. 42 As noted above, symbolism is a subordinate concern for many who hold the traditional position. However, it is emphasized here in order to make a clear comparison with MacKinnon. 43 Loades, ‘Women,’ 117.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Women's Ordination from an Evangelical Perspective

In addition to the works by Anglican scholars that already cited, here are some major works by Protestant authors on this topic.

Books in favor of Women’s Ordination

Collections of Essays

Mickelsen, Alvera (editor), Women, Authority & the Bible. InterVarsity Press, 1986.

An early collection of papers by evangelical Protestant authors with responses from their evangelical colleagues. The essays treat Biblical authority and headship, and certain key passages in I Corinthians 11 and 14, and I Timothy 2 that bear on the topic.

Pierce, Ronald W. and Rebecca Merrill Groothius (editors), Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy, Second Edition (InterVarsity Press, 2005).

Now the standard collection, of evangelical Protestant essays treating all the major topics (exegetical, theological, hermeneutical, cultural and historical) thoroughly and clearly.

General Works on Women in the New Testament and the Early Church

Bauckham, Richard, Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels. Eerdmans, 2002.

Bauckham argues persuasively for the leadership ministries of women in the New Testament.

Cooper, Kate, Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women. The Overlook Press, 2013.

Cooper says that because the domestic sphere in Greco-Roman society was explicitly "women's world," and because the early Christian house churches were located in that world, women's leadership was both logical and prominent in the first 150 years of the Christian movement.

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Keener, Craig S., Paul, Women & Wives: Marriage and Women's Ministry in the Letters of Paul. Hendrickson Publishers,1992.

Keener surveys the central texts: I Corinthians 11:1-16, I Corinthians 14:34-35, Ephesians 5:18-33, I Timothy 2:9-15. (See below for more detailed studies on each of these passages.)

Macy, Gary, The Hidden History of Women's Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Macy's thesis is that before the 12th century, ordination in was more functional (i.e. induction into a certain ministry) and missiological than sacramental, and included women in certain orders. The 12th century church (in its spirit of systematization) linked ordination closely to the Mass, and excluded women from all orders.

Payne, Philip B., Man and Woman, One in Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Paul's Letters. Zondervan, 2009

Like the volume by Craig Keener (above), Payne's work surveys the central texts in great detail, emphasizing the first-century situations into which Paul spoke correctively. Payne shows that the so-called "prohibitive texts" address specific abuses and errors at the time, and do not in the least exclude women's leadership, then or now.

Witherington, Ben III, Women and the Genesis of Christianity. Cambridge University Press, 1990.

An early, but still valuable, survey of women's place in Greco-Roman society, and the world of the early Christian house churches where women's leadership flourished.

Commentaries on I Corinthians (11:1-16 and 14:34-34)

Peppiatt, Lucy, Women and Worship at Corinth: Paul's Rhetorical Arguments in I Corinthians. Cascade Books, 2015.

Peppiatt explores the possibility that the "headship" passage in I Corinthians 11:3-10 may be a quotation to which Paul is responding, and that his own teaching begins in verse 11.

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Thiselton, Anthony C., The First Epistle to the Corinthians. Eerdmans, 2000: in The New International Greek Testament Commentary).

Thistelton's commentary is huge and exhaustive, arguing in great detail for the need to read Paul's teaching in the context of Corinth in the 50s AD, and not as a deliberate and timeless prohibition of women's leadership.

Witherington, Ben III, Conflict & Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on I and II Corinthians. Eerdmans, 1995. Witherington offers perceptive observations on Paul's intentions, in the two "problematical" texts that appear to prohibit women's leadership in the house church context.

Commentaries on I Timothy 2: 8-8-15

Fee, Gordon D., 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus. Baker Books, 2011.

Fee offers brief but useful comments on verses 11-12, to the effect that Paul was addressing a specific abuse in Ephesus (women "domineering" over men, interpreting authentein in a pejorative sense) and not offering a universal or eternal prohibition of women's teaching ministry.

Kroeger, Catherine Clark and Richard Clark Kroeger, I Suffer Not a Woman: Rethinking I Timothy 2:11-15 in Light of Ancient Evidence. Baker Book House, 1992.

This was the groundbreaking study that explored the context of Artemis-worship in Ephesus, its influence on women in the Ephesian house churches, and Paul's desire to correct certain errors in teaching and practice that Christian women were importing from their environment.

Wright, N.T., 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus. InterVarsity Press, 2009

A useful short collection of Bible studies for individuals and small groups. Wright's words summarize the general tendency of evangelical Protestant exegesis of I Timothy 2:

"I believe the apostle was saying that on the one hand women should be trained and educated in the faith (in contrast to much of the Roman Empire), but that on the other hand Christianity should not become a cult like that of Artemis in

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Ephesus, where women did the leading and kept the men in line. Men should not lord it over women, nor women over men" (page 19).

Books containing a variety of views

Collections of Essays

Clouse, Bonnidell and Robert G., eds., Women in Ministry: Four Views. Downers Grove: IVP, 1989.

Written from an evangelical Protestant perspective, the editors have four authors who present arguments for and against women in ministry from different perspectives. The most interesting aspect of this work is that the editors included a rebuttal section where the scholars could critique, refute, or correct each other’s arguments.

Beck, James R. and Blomberg, Craig L., eds., Two Views on Women in Ministry. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001.

This volume is particularly helpful, not only the four essays (Craig S. Keener and Linda L. Belleville for the Egalitarian position and Thomas R. Schreiner and Ann L. Bowman for the Complementarian position), but also Blomberg’s concluding essay.

Books not in favor of women’s ordination

Collections of Essays

Piper, John and Grudem, Wayne, eds., Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1991.

Especially helpful since it interacts specifically with the case made by those taking the Bible seriously on the other side. It also makes an attempt at exploring how to apply this teaching.

General Works on Women in the New Testament and the Early Church

Mitchell, Patrick, The Scandal of Gender: Early Christian Teaching on the Man and the Woman. Salisbury, Mass.: Regina Orthodox Press, 1998.

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A presentation of early Christian views on the roles of men and women using primary sources from that era.

Works discussing Men’s and Women’s roles in the Church and Society

Clark, Stephen B., Man and Woman in Christ: An Examination of the Roles of Men and Women in Light of Scripture and the Social Sciences. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Servant, 1980.

A serious examination of Scripture and the sociological, anthropological and historical issues of the roles of men and women as society made the transition from traditional to technological and the changed from perceiving masculine and feminine roles from defined to free individuals. This work is valuable as a conservative evangelical response to the argument that those who resist a redefinition of women’s roles have ignored the sociological and anthropological issues.

Harper, Michael, Equal and Different: Male and Female in Church and Family. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1994.

Harper, an Anglican priest and key figure in the Anglican Pentecostal movement, left the Anglican Church in the 1990’s over what he saw as ignoring of the clear teaching of Scripture, especially on the issue of women’s ordination. This book outlines the facts he saw as most significant in his spiritual journey from indifference over the issue to a clear conviction that women’s ordination was unacceptable in light of the teachings of Scripture and the testimony of the historic church. Harper’s presentation of early church history benefits from citing the historical references directly, rather than relying on other authors’ opinions and summaries of them.

Hurley, James B., Man and Woman in Biblical Perspective. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1981.

This book approaches Scripture from a Reformed perspective and attempts to develop Biblical principles of the roles of men and women, taking into account the cultural perspectives of the time the passages were written. It also attempts to show how these principles can be applied in a variety of modern situations.

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Works discussing relevant Scripture Passages

Hauke, Manfred, Women in the Priesthood?: A Systematic Analysis in the Light of the Order of Creation and Redemption, tr. David Kipp. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986.

While neither evangelical, nor Anglican, Hauke presents a thorough and ecumenical examination of the issue. This book is valuable to evangelicals for its scholarly discussion of the biblical issue of created order and the implications that this teaching has for the theology and doctrine of the Church.

Köstenberger, Andreas J., Schreiner, Thomas R., and Baldwin, H. Scott, eds., Women in the Church: A Fresh Analysis of 1Timothy 2:9-15.Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995.

A thorough and scholarly analysis of the Greek of this passage, coming to the conclusion that the best translation supports a complementarian view of the roles of men and women and a traditional view of the roles of men and women in the life of the Church.

Studies and Articles

"A Report of the Study Concerning the Ordination of Women Undertaken by the Anglican Mission in America: A survey of the Leading Theological Convictions," unpublished paper by the Rt. Rev. John H. Rodgers and the Women's Ordination Study Team (July 31, 2003): available online at www.vulcanhammer.org/island/w.pdf

"The Doctrine of the Trinity and Its Bearing on the Relationship of Men and Women," the 1999 Sydney Anglican Diocesan Doctrine Commission Report: available on line at http://www.sds.asn.au/Site/104629.asp?ph=cp

“Women, Ordination and the Bible”, written by Rod Whitacre, 28August 2014: available on line at http://www.tsm.edu/2014/09/03/women_ordination_and_the_bible/

This article details the reasons from Scripture that moved this Trinity faculty member from being a supporter of women’s ordination to the conviction that Scripture does not support it as a practice in the Church.

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Women's Ordination from an Anglo-catholic Perspective

General Anglican Sources

[Church of England]. The Priesthood of the Ordained Ministry. London: Church House Publishing, 1986.

Study by the Church of England regarding the Anglican understanding of Holy Orders.

[Church of England]. The Ordination of Women to the Priesthood: A Second Report by the House of Bishops of the General Synod of the Church of England. London: Church House Publishing, 1988.

Study by the Church of England into the theological arguments for and against the ordination of women to the priesthood.

[Church of England]. Women Bishops in the Church of England? A Report of the House of Bishops’ Working Party on Women in the Episcopate. London: Church House Publishing, 2004.

The so-called ‘Rochester Report,’ considering the arguments for and against the ordination of women to the episcopate in the Church of England.

Avis, Paul, ed. Seeking the Truth of Change in the Church: Reception, Communion and the Ordination of Women. London: T and T Clark, 2004.

A collection of essays edited by noted ecclesiological scholar Paul Avis, into the concepts of ‘reception’ and communion as they relate specifically to the Anglican discussions of the ordination of women.

Catholic Perspective—Notable Sources

The works listed below are both significant for their contribution to the arguments over women’s ordination, and should be easy to access.

Beattie, Tina. God’s Mother, Eve’s Advocate: A Marian Narrative of Women’s Salvation. London: Continuum, 2002.

Tina Beattie is a lay Roman Catholic theologian, but her work has received approbation from feminist theologians within Anglicanism. This work offers one of the most robust expositions of the Catholic feminist position available. Chapters three

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and eight specifically discuss the ordination of women. Respectively, these chapters review difficulties in the official Roman Catholic position, and advance the argument for a Marian priesthood of women.

Kirk, Geoffrey. Without Precedent: Scripture, Tradition, and the Ordination of Women. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2016.

Kirk examines the biblical and historical precedents cited in support of the ordination of women, arguing that none of them are sufficient to bear the weight placed on them, and that the ordination of women is rather a capitulation to anti-Christian values in Western culture. Topics covered include Christ’s treatment of women, Galatians 3:28, Junia, and Mary Magdalene. Although he is now in the Roman Ordinariate, Kirk previously served within the Church of England and was in the leadership of Forward in Faith UK; he therefore addresses the topic from the perspective of the debates within the Church of England.

Lewis, C.S. ‘Priestesses in the Church?’ In Undeceptions: Essays on Theology and Ethics. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1971. 191-196. Also printed in God in the Dock.

Lewis’s essay is the earliest argument with regard to a symbolic dimension of the priesthood, and still holds an important place in the discussion today. Lewis acknowledges the rational arguments in favor of women’s ordination, but holds that revelation is supra-rational, and that human nature has an impenetrable, mysterious aspect to it which should not be taken lightly. Taken together, these elements raise the concern that women’s ordination violates certain mysteries of creation which are indicated by God’s choice to reveal himself in predominantly masculine language.

Loades, Ann. ‘On Women.’ In The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis, ed. Robert MacSwain and . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 160-173.

Loades offers a critical response to Lewis’s essay, arguing that women’s ordination need not have the effects Lewis fears. The Church has not, historically, limited itself to only the language of Scripture in talking about God; so why should a change to priestly symbolism about God be a violation, rather than an enrichment?

Mascall, E.L. ‘Women Priests?’ London: The Church Literature Association, 1972. Available online at http://trushare.com/Mascall Women Priests.htm and elsewhere.

This essay, which reflects Mascall’s developed thought on the ordination of women, is frequently referred to by Anglo-Catholics. In it, Mascall reviews the early development of the discussion of women’s ordination within Anglicanism, makes

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arguments from tradition, the difference of the sexes (particularly in light of cultural change), and revisits Lewis’s argument from symbolism. The essay concludes with a long discussion of the views of Swiss Reformed theologian Jean-Jacques von Allmen.

Podmore, Colin, ed. Fathers in God? Resources for Reflection on Women in the Episcopate. Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2015.

Fathers in God is a compilation of the materials from the traditionalist Anglo-Catholic side of the women bishops debate in the Church of England in the early 2000s. It includes the Anglo-Catholic section of the so-called Rochester Report (Women Bishops in the Church of England? Chaired by then Michael Nazir-Ali), together with the theological material from Consecrated Women (see below), and the 2006 address of Cardinal Kasper to the English House of Bishops on the ecumenical ramifications of the ordination of women.

Ecumenical Sources

[Paul VI.] Inter insigniores (Declaration on the Question of Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood). Rome: Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1976. Available online at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith _doc_19761015_inter-insigniores_en.html.

[John Paul II.] Ordinatio sacerdotalis (Apostolic Letter of John Paul II to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone). Rome: Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1992. Available online at https://w2.vatican.va/content/john- paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1994/documents/hf_jp- ii_apl_19940522_ordinatio- sacerdotalis.html.

[John Paul II.] Responsum ad propositum dubitum Concerning the Teaching Contained in ‘Ordinatio sacerdotalis.’ Rome: Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1995. Available online at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_1 9951028_dubium-ordinatio-sac_en.html.

The three documents given above outline the official Roman Catholic position on the ordination of women. Inter insigniores gives the argument from tradition, supported by the argument from the priest’s role in persona Christi; Ordinatio sacerdotalis reviews these arguments and states the conclusion, principally from the argument concerning tradition, that the ordination of women is a change which lies beyond the authority of the Church to make. The Responsum ad dubitum clarifies that the teaching of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis is to be considered infallible.

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Butler, Sr. Sara. The Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide to the Teaching of the Church. Chicago: Hillenbrand Books, 2007.

Butler’s work is widely regarded as the best guide to the official position of the Roman Catholic Church. Of particular note is her review of the patristic discussion of women’s ordination.

Behr-Sigel, Elizabeth and Kallistos Ware, The Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2000.

Eastern Orthodoxy, unlike Roman Catholicism, has not produced any definitive rulings on the question of women’s ordination, although there is a general consensus that the practice is not to be adopted. This book contains essays by each of the authors discussing the historical development of the discussion within Orthodoxy as well as its theological aspects. Behr-Sigel and Ware both hold a liberal position - meaning, within the context of Orthodoxy, that they are primarily arguing against closing discussion of the question prematurely. In particular, they note that a clear understanding of what women’s ministry should be is especially important for those Orthodox churches which are in contact with Western culture, and that many of the Orthodox arguments to date have relied heavily on Western positions, rather than being developed from within the Orthodox tradition.

Catholic Perspective—Other Sources

The sources included here were read for the above paper; however, they either make relatively minor contributions, or may be difficult to acquire due either due to ‘in house’ publishing, or publication in academic journals. Consecrated Women is the exception: it is both a major contribution, and easy to acquire; however, its theological content is included in Fathers in God?, listed above.

Baker, Jonathan, ed. Consecrated Women? A Contribution to the Women Bishops Debate. Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2004.

Consecrated Women is a Forward in Faith UK document released alongside the Rochester Report, presenting the arguments for the traditionalist position in considerable depth. Topics covered include the example of Christ, God as Father, headship, the marriage imagery of Scripture, priesthood in the Old and New Testaments, ministry in the early Church, and the nature of the episcopate. It also includes the legal framework of a proposal for a separate traditionalist province within the Church of England, in addition to the provinces of Canterbury and York.

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Beattie, Tina. ‘Vision and Vulnerability: The Significance of Sacramentality and the Woman Priest for Feminist Theology.’ In Exchanges of Grace: Essays in Honour of Ann Loades. London: SCM Press, 2008. 235-249.

In this essay, Beattie examines two PhD theses by women priests which examine the effects of their ministry in their parishes in the Church of England.

Bridge, G.R. Women and the Apostolic Ministry? Parry Sound, ON: The Convent Society, 1997.

Bridge’s short study examines the arguments against women’s ordination from Scripture (including the doctrine of creation), tradition, and sacramental validity, as well as noting the ramifications of the practice in terms of ecumenism and the social and political dimensions of the debate.

Loades, Ann. ‘Women in the Episcopate?’ Anvil 21 no. 2 (2004): 113-119. In this short article, Loades reviews her participation on the Church of England commission on women in the episcopate, and outlines several of the standard objections to the traditionalist position.

MacKinnon, Donald. ‘The Icon Christi and Eucharistic Theology.’ Theology (March/April 1992): 109-113.

MacKinnon takes aim at the connection drawn by traditionalist Anglo-Catholics between the ordination of women and sacramental validity, arguing that their position is a potentially heretical innovation.

Mascall, E.L. ‘Women and the Priesthood of the Church.’ London: The Church Literature Association, 1960.

This essay emphasizes the equality of men and women in the New Testament. However Mascall notes that Christ chose twelve male apostles, and that the Christian life is not a matter of general categories, but of personal enactment which is necessarily gendered. The sexes are equal but different, and this is reflected in the requirement that only men can be ordained. This essay represents an earlier stage of Mascall’s thought on the ordination of women, as seen in his treatment of ‘protestant’ views which contrasts with the later essay given above.

Richardson, Alan. ‘Women and the Priesthood.’ In Lambeth Essays on Ministry: Essays Written for the Lambeth Conference 1968. Ed. Arthur Michael Ramsey. London: SPCK, 1969. 75-78.

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Richardson rejects several traditionalist arguments as ‘non-theological;’ and notes that women’s ordination is consistent with the ‘priesthood of all believers.’ However, he notes the lack of precedent and wonders whether such a change might not require wider ecumenical authority than a single church can claim.

Underhill, Evelyn. ‘Ideals of the Ministry of Women.’ In Mixed Pasture: Twelve Essays and Addresses. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock 2015. 113-122.

The earliest source included here, Underhill’s 1932 address to a conference on women’s ministry states her opposition to women’s ordination on the grounds of tradition, and the opinion that only an ecumenical consensus among those who shared the three-fold order of ministry could change this tradition. Additionally, she holds that preoccupation with ordained status distracts from what is necessary for a real, effective growth in the ministry of women.

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Section V: Analysis and Conclusions

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Final Summary

This section concludes the formal work of the Theological Task Force on Holy Orders. In it, we review the commission given to us as a Task Force, discuss the wider context of our study, and make recommendations to the College, as it moves forward in addressing the important issue of women in holy orders.

What We Were Asked to Do

When the Task Force was formed in late 2012, Archbishop Robert Duncan charged us “to lead the College of Bishops in a discussion about the issue of women in holy orders.” In light of this commission, we have provided the College with the information which we believe is necessary for an informed theological and scholarly discussion of this issue.

It is important to recognize that it was not our task to provide a solution to this controversy. Those who read our work with such an expectation will be disappointed.

Following the Method of Procedure, outlined in the beginning of our work, we first addressed the hermeneutical and ecclesiological principles which inform any discussion over the ordination of women. Many equally fine and godly scholars have come to differing conclusions, despite looking at the same biblical texts.

We believe that these differences of interpretation derive from differing theological commitments concerning the way in which the church functions as the context for interpreting Scripture and the nature of the ordained ministry. These differences are the particular focus of our study in the third section of our report.

The Task Force is comprised of advocates for and against the ordination of women. Each member has represented his or her convictions with integrity and robust argument. Both perspectives on this issue have been strongly represented; however, we were able to conduct our deliberations in an atmosphere of Christian love and friendship.

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What We Have Learned

As the Task Force conducted its work, we not only relied upon the scholarly ability of our members, but also consulted various other scholars, both personally and through their published and unpublished writings. We have been careful to listen to academic voices on both sides of the issue and have endeavored to give balanced consideration to the material that we have received.

The Task Force has recognized that there are two general perspectives on holy orders which inform the discussion of women’s ordination. We have adopted the terms “Evangelical” and “Catholic” as a short-hand way of identifying the two groups; but any such nomenclature in this regard can be misleading.

The lines between Evangelical, Catholic, High Church or Low Church perspectives are often more porous now than they were in the nineteenth century, when these terms originated. Nevertheless, we have recognized that those who advocate for the ordination of women do so most often on the basis of characteristically Evangelical values, and those who argue against the ordination of women do so most often on the basis of characteristically Anglo-Catholic values.

That said, it must be recognized that there is a strong voice in the Evangelical and Reformed camp, which is opposed to the ordination of women; and there are some Anglo- Catholics, who argue for the inclusion of women in holy orders. We have attempted to acknowledge this in the essays provided in the previous section.

The reader should therefore bear in mind that these terms are used here for convenience and are not meant to account for everything that that they imply in other discussions. It also is possible that identification with Evangelicalism or Anglo-Catholicism, based upon liturgical preferences, may belie a theology that has more in common with the other perspective. Moreover, some individuals may hold eclectic and possibly self- contradictory hermeneutical and ecclesiological commitments, rather than a consistent theological approach.

We recognize that there is a great deal of theological unity within our Province between the other provinces comprising the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON). Our discussion about the ordination of women should not obscure the extent to which we share a common sense of mission and witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ, within a common Anglican heritage.

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We believe that the shared hermeneutical principles, articulated in the Section II of our work and approved by the College of Bishops, are a valuable contribution to the life of the Church.

Despite this broad agreement, there are differences in hermeneutics and ecclesiology which result in very different views of ordination. These divergent views entail the lack of a common language for discussion ordination: each side has developed its own way of speaking. The Task Force has given a great deal of effort to learn each other’s “language,” and attempted to provide a guide to each perspective’s language in the third section of this report.

In addition, while many ecclesiological values are held in common, the divergent perspectives place those values in differing hierarchies of importance. Thus, as we note in section four, differing weight given to certain values has led to different conclusions with regard to women’s ordination. So, for example, the varying importance given to the , ecumenical concerns (and differing ecumenical partners), and God’s continuing correction of the Church will significantly affect an individual’s views on this issue.

The Task Force finds arguments on both sides are anchored within accepted Anglican perspectives. Both sides are guarding important biblical truths. The gospel radically changes our understanding of who we are in Christ; nonetheless, God created humanity as male and female, and the New Testament’s teaching on marriage reaffirms the goodness of this sexual difference. Each side affirms both propositions; however, a difference in the way each proposition is understood leads to divergent views on the relationship between man and woman in the family and in the church.

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What We Recommend

Women’s ordination has not been accepted by the whole church, despite its existence for decades. The support for the ordination of women has not dissipated over those decades either. Godly, learned scholars within Anglicanism argue both for and against ordaining women. Both sides must reflect on this reality.

We are mindful of the Christian call to unity. Many in the Church have come to be wary of calls to compromise the truth for the sake of unity. There are indeed times when insurmountable differences as to core principles inevitably lead to division, or when a break in spiritual unity through the violation of trust is reflected in an outward division of the Church.

However, the unity of the Church, rightly understood, is in fact a guardian of truth: both because it requires a discipline of love and self-denial, which leads to the “holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Heb 12:14; 1 Cor 13:5); and because it is the united Church which shares in the mind of Christ and testifies to the truth of the Gospel (Phil 2:2- 5; Acts 15:24-28; John 17:21, 23). We encourage the College to remember the Christian call to unity.

We also encourage the members of the College of Bishops to commit to one another in patience, love, honesty and integrity, as this discussion moves forward. In this respect, we must learn from the past. The Episcopal Church’s discussion of women’s ordination was superficially structured in the right way. Anglicans approach controversies in a conciliar manner and emphasize the importance of dialogue, and the discussion seemed to be guided by these principles. Sadly, there was a great deal of disconnect between words and actions. Many believed that the actions taken by church leaders were duplicitous and promises were not kept.1

There is a great temptation to be so committed to the “rightness” of one’s own position, that forbearance, love and mutual submission are lost. However, failure to maintain trust and integrity with one another will destroy Godly unity. Any structure for dialogue will only be as good as the level of trust that is maintained between the people involved in that process.

The Task Force is aware that there is a great deal of anxiety for many in our Province on both sides, who hold this issue to be of great importance. Some may be tempted to act on this anxiety, if their desired outcome is not realized in this report or in the College’s use

1 This is chronicled in Marjorie W. Avery, Peggy Bruce and Cris Fouse, eds. Small Steps Down a Slippery Slope: A Capsule of Recent Events in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (Moline, IL: Forward in Faith, 2007).

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of it. We encourage the College of Bishops to be aware of the extent to which anxiety can be a powerful motivator toward detrimental, reactionary behavior and to be a model of peace and stability to each other and the dioceses we serve.

We encourage the College in its discussions, to be conscious of the language used in discussion and the definition of terms, as highlighted in Section II.4 of this report.

Many on both sides of this issue believe that ordaining women to the priesthood implies, logically and theologically, the consecration of women to the episcopate. In the third section of this report, however, we observed that one characteristic of the episcopate is its role as a sign of the church’s unity.

Because the ordination of women remains a hotly contested issue among orthodox Anglicans, it would appear that ordaining a woman to the episcopate is itself a controversial action that would result in disunity among the College of Bishops and GAFCON. The constitution of our Province does not permit the consecration of women to the episcopate, and recognizing this aspect of episcopacy provides a theological rationale for our constitutional provision.

The center of gravity in the Christian world generally, and in the Anglican Communion specifically, is shifting to the global south. Our decisions must be made in concert with our GAFCON partners, which may not look at this issue through western eyes and with western theological baggage.

The Method of Procedure detailed in this report and adopted by the College of Bishops makes provision for interaction with the GAFCON primates, so we remind the College that our Province needs to work in concert with our GAFCON partners in addressing this issue.

Because our province includes both those who ordain women and those who reject this practice, the Task Force urges the College of Bishop to draft principles of conduct, which will guide the Province in a common understanding of how we relate to one another, while maintaining our differences. Guidance from the bishops will help minimize misunderstanding and hurtful offenses, while allowing for the maintenance of integrity and conscience among our people.

While the Task Force acknowledges that both perspectives on the issue of women’s ordination have anchored their opinions in accepted principles within the Anglican tradition, we advocate continued efforts toward closer unity on this issue. To be content with the current situation would be in violation of our Lord’s desire and prayer that his people be one.

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While Anglicans may disagree on a number of matters, the divisive nature of this particular issue, even in the best of circumstances, is an impediment to a unified sacramental ministry of our province. However, a precipitous decision, simply for the sake moving past this issue, would not reflect the love that is required by God’s people. Both positions on this issue cannot be right, but both positions are held by good and godly people. Work toward a resolution of this issue must move forward, but it should be done with patience and the leading of the Holy Spirit. The Task Force encourages the College of Bishops to adopt a schedule of discussion that allows for sufficient time for study, prayer and interaction.

Conclusion

Over the course of our study, we have found that no single argument, either way, that clearly settles this controversy to the satisfaction of all. Anglicans on both sides hold their opinion with a sincere wish to serve God and uphold the gospel.

The obligation for those engaged in this discussion, as it continues, is not simply to consider individual needs and opinions, or to defer to the judgments of the society around us, but to consider this decision in the context of Scripture and the implications it will have for the future of the Church.

It is our prayer that the work produced by the Task Force will provide our bishops and province with the grounds for a respectful and informed understanding of why we come to differing conclusions about ordination of women. Too often, fruitful discussion of this controversy is impeded by misunderstanding and ill-founded assumptions about why someone may hold a particular theological position. Any hope of making progress toward a common mind must begin with mutual understanding and respect. We offer our work to the College of Bishops in this spirit.

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